Frozen Again Prequel: 'And Now These Three Remain'
by SetsunaKou
Summary: Prequel to "Frozen Again" Trilogy. Powerful Elemental Ice Queen Elsa has been Protector of the Enchanted Forest & Anna the Queen of Arendelle for 9 months now since the movie's end. Elsa's trained her magic & Anna's just about to marry, but something's missing in their lives. This miniseries bridges what's happened to the sisters after F2 & before 'Frozen Again' begins. COMPLETE!
1. Part 1: Without You by My Side

_This is the prequel (or interquel between the Frozen 2 movie and the start of my first sequel, Book 1 : 'Frozen Again: 'Faith, Hope, and Love') to my 'Frozen Again Trilogy' that I have so much gratitude for all of your love and support in my writing over these past 6 wonderful years at Fanfiction together. Thanks for reading with an open mind for some minor tweaking to bridge between where our story begins, dear Frozen friends! — HarukaKou_

* * *

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

**"Frozen Again Prequel"**

"**And Now These Three Remain"**

**Part 1 :**

**'Without You by My Side"**

Once upon a time, there was a breathtaking kingdom which Almighty God placed in the far, far North corner of the world. There the mysterious midnight sun and ethereal polar nights danced beneath the mystical veil of the aurora borealis.

In this beautiful Land of the Midnight Sun lived a special pair of siblings. Sisters, both special and unique, who possessed an unparalleled faith in one another and the gift called '_selfless love'_ that never gave up on anyone, especially each other.

By a hard-fought path full of destiny both Elsa and Anna Bernadotte had become Queens of this extraordinary kingdom. Each fearless, brave young woman was, in their own right, a wondrous example of heart, a brilliant leader of character, a faithful caretaker of the land and the people entrusted to them which they both loved.

After a heartbreaking journey where sisterly devotion won the day, the difficult lonely nights of separation – one sister left to rule in Arendelle, the other remaining in the far-off Enchanted Forest to bridge the gap between humans and the spirit world –– had taken a toll on Anna and Elsa both.

It was hard without one another to share their daily lives and talk to and laugh with and enjoy life as best friends and confidantes day by day in these critical maturing stages. Particularly after the unhappy experience of being forced to part in their youth had reared its unwanted head now again as Elsa and Anna entered womanhood.

Thus was each compassionately generous thought which beat within the heavy hearts of Queen Elsa and Queen Anna, who were raised to be too kind and caring to ever complain of their own heartaches.

At least out loud.

Elsa's uncanny ice magic powers had kept the girls apart all through their formative youth at their kingly father Agnarr's well-meaning, yet faulted decision to shelter both of his beloved children safe until his elder daughter had learned control of her cryokinetics behind the closed gates.

After years that stole away the sisters' only lifeline – their loving parents, King Agnarr and dear mother Queen Iduna, it took a convoluted Coronation day, a rebellious Ice Queen, a failed Southern Isles Prince's coup d'etat some five years ago—left a kinship love that always endured for Anna and Elsa to be reunited as they should be at last.

But after a mere three short years of good times in Arendelle with a promising future in sisterly bliss, another trial of the past ruined the peace and tranquility of the two young women now just on the cusp of enjoying life to its fullest potential, together and free at last, at the ages of 22 and 25 with liberating excitement around every corner.

Now, this recent trial that a cruel grandfather they never met, the selfless mother and heroic father they had lost, and the elements of the wind, earth, water and sky, had set into motion enveloped these two special daughters of Norway.

Elsa and Anna were thrown in a whirlwind of danger and intrigue amid mystical energies and forces of nature that only the miraculously gifted first child of a good Arendellian father and brave Northuldran mother who bridged the gap between the two worlds could tame.

But only at the cost of that most special young woman's liberty to choose a normal family life in her home, and rather sacrifice her freedom to the mystical duties that bound her as the legendary Fifth element of harmony.

The dutiful leader in Elsa Bernadotte was almost resigned to forever serve as bridge between the humans through Anna, and protecting the spirits of the mysterious Enchanted Forest.

But it broke the now warm heart of the loyal sister in Elsa Bernadotte to be so far away from the little sister she adored. Not to mention her homesick pangs for the kingdom of Arendelle she was born and reared to love and dutifully rule as Queen of the cherished people held close to her heart.

On top of all that, Elsa wasn't even remotely ready to entertain what the tingling sensations in her full heart meant whenever her mind wandered to thoughts of a certain handsome –

_Handsome?! Where did THAT come from?!_

-red-headed young man she thought was long time gone, merely a bad memory, from an adventure or two ago in the past which seemed a different lifetime ago now.

But after encountering Ahtohallen's mystical river of her most important memories again, Elsa didn't understand why Prince Hans's charismatic signature ran so deep within the channels of her mind.

Along with his pervasively lilting tenor voice where the prince seemed to leave an indelible mark on her subconscious as Elsa yet heard his words over and over again echo in her ears when she was in solitude, as was the case so often now.

"'_Your Majesty, if I may assure you...'__  
__'Queen Elsa! Don't be the monster they think you are!'__  
__'If you would only just stop the winter…'__  
__Bring back summer, please.'__  
__'I will do what I can.'_

Feeling vulnerable against such a man, even as an all-powerful elemental, Elsa shakes her pearlescent head in yet another attempt to dismiss the unmistakable mental signature the thirteenth Prince of the Southern Isles apparently left on her.

_Oh, Anna. You'd probably laugh at me for this. How I wish I could be back in Arendelle with you so you could do just that! If only to sneak into your room and cuddle up under the covers to tell my dear little sister all my haunted heart's troubles which I can't understand on my own. Not without your clearheaded optimism to guide me, Anna._

_The elements are peace with me here, and the Saami who stayed behind are helpful and kind. However…_

_I miss you so very much, Anna… I would give anything to be back with you in Arendelle… Nothing and no one could ever replace having my sister at my side to warm my once cold heart…_

_But I mustn't complain. This is my destiny…_

…_isn't it…?_

Raising her icy fingers up towards the southern Norwegian sky where she knew her beloved sister, soulmate, and best friend was no doubt still slumbering beneath, Queen Elsa, in all her wintry white ethereal glory gazes up through the veil of the Enchanted Forest, longing to return to Anna and be part of that enticing summer in Arendelle once again…

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"Elsa? Brrr! You've got cold hands, big sisty! Don't hog all the blanket!"

Sleepily talking to Elsa as if her sister was here having one of their slumber parties again, the ginger girl was shivering in her rolled up sleeves, pale green nightdress which she had ditched the jacket thereof during a hot sweaty night.

But now a stripped down Anna woke up as cold as ice.

Having become unusually overheated under her bedcovers in the middle of summer time, the slumbering young woman had unceremoniously discarded her outer nightwear. But now awakening a little more than chilly, Anna deliriously murmurs as she stirs from her canopied bed.

Actually, it was Elsa's canopy bed, Elsa's room, that the lonely-for-her sister young girl had moved into, just to be closer to her absent sister's scent and sights and aura in some small way again.

"Cold-cold-cold-cold!" Instinctively, the energetic gal leaps up to collect another blanket or sweater or article of clothing from the closet dresser. That's when her dizzy trembling hands touch upon the knit yarn folds of a piece of fabric so near and dear to her heart that the girl forgets all about her shivering.

"My birthday shawl…" With a soft smile on the verge of tears, Anna sentimentally recalls how her adored big sister Elsa – during the first of those three wonderfully precious years they were permitted to live together side-by-side in sweet sisterhood– had made her 20th birthday the perfect-est day in every way.

Even though Elsa was suffering from a pretty severe cold at the time, the tall blonde Queen had never shirked from her plans to give her little sis an unforgettable celebration.

From the fun sunflower decorated courtyard to the incredible kingdom wide party, to the invigorating scavenger hunt filled with presents of every shape and size, Queen Elsa had painted the town _BIRTHDAY_ for Princess Anna that year.

And this colorfully woven shawl from Oaken's movable kiosk store was the icing on the ice cream cake for Anna. Because at the end of the day, when Elsa finally succumbed to admit her frozen fever, Anna had the opportunity at last to care for her dearest friend and most special person in the world, putting her gifted warm shawl around Elsa's shivering shoulders then.

And that was the greatest present to Anna of all, the chance for her to show her love and care for her best friend of a big sister by nursing Elsa back to health for a week full of precious days she thought would never end.

It was the best of times, just the two of them, side-by-side slowing down from the grindstone of castle duties and governing a nation to just be 'Elsa and Anna' loving sisters again, caring for each other, talking, laughing and sitting on the bed together dreaming of normal things.

Things like fun trips and picnics, Olaf hijinx with Marshmallow and the snowgies, Kristoff announcing to the world of his love and calling Anna his 'Baby' at the party in public that left prim and proper Elsa reeling…

To Anna's memory that was the finest of weeks, despite Elsa's illness, because she kept her very indispensable sibling close to her, just to be her sister again and not have to share her with the citizens of Arendelle, _all_ the time.

Or the rest of kingdom, for that matter. Elsa in demand was constantly busy enough as the all-important Queen of Arendelle. But it was even worse now that she had to become the Fifth Elemental spirit who bridged the gap between humans and the elemental world.

Because it took her way up there in the lonely, desolate, distant Enchanted Forest to keep in check those needy elemental spirits.

_And you left _**_me_**_ here to be Queen of Arendelle in your place!? I don't know what the heck I'm doing half the time! But I'll keep trying, because you believed in me, Elsa._

_Just like I will always believe in you…_

With the shawl Elsa had given her wrapped tightly around her sighing shoulders, Queen Anna trots over in her bare feet to Elsa's bedroom window. With her hands spread over the clear glass, Anna's forehead touches the cool panes as tears forming in her watery eyes trickle down her cheeks.

_Though I've been holding on tight to you, Elsa, I miss you being physically, actually here so much! I know it's selfish, but I'd give anything to have you living in Arendelle with me, permanently like before!_

_Then you can be the real Queen of Arendelle again! I really suck at making all of these tough decisions, wading through tons of important paperwork, meeting so many dull dignitaries and the like!_

_The only good part through all this has been Kristoff. He's stood by me through thick and thin, and been really supportive, even on my bad days when Kai was nitpicking and had me tearing my hair out._

_Oh, did I mention Kristoff has recently been oh-so-gently pushing for me to set our wedding day? You know, in his mellow, beat-around-the-bush kinda way. But it's been so nuts here these past months of me tying to get used to being Queen, and all the full schedule duties it entails, that I asked Kristly to put our marriage on hold a bit._

_He hasn't minded much, probably 'cause I think he's a little nervous about being 'Prince Consort' to the Queen now, too. Poor guy just got his head wrapped around being the second Princess' hubby! He never imagined I'd be upgraded to Queen!_

_Heck, neither did I!_

_Well, it's now been almost nine months since Kristoff proposed… He seems to be hinting it's time now to get married since I've more than come of age on my 22nd birthday last week…_

_The one you weren't able to come to, Elsa, because Nokk and Bruni were playing tricks on each other again…_

_But I refuse to walk down the aisle with my guy without you here by my side, big sisty!_

_If you just say that you can come, you'll save Kristly from expiring from his long wait for me! Plus, you can take over where you left off as Queen…at least while I'm off honeymooning across Arendelle with my big guy, right?!_

_Then I bet you'll want to stay forever when you see how much you've missed it! You were so good at being Queen, 'cause you always liked reading and bookwork and staying so prim inside the castle stuff, while I loved running free in the wildflowers outdoors!_

_Lil' ole me just wants to be a lil' ole wife in a lil' ole cottage in my own lil' ole way again. No more of this crazy responsible Regal Queen charade for me! If just for a little while of being liberated newlyweds…_

_Pretty pleeease?_

* * *

"Ooh! Letter time! I know I just sent one via Gale, whom Elsa said was feeling a tad under the weather with a summer cold—_those stink_—but…If a pre-wedding teaser doesn't get Elsa home for me, nothing will!" Plottingly rubbing her hands together, her chill assuaged by the sudden energetic burst of an idea's excitement, Anna rushes over to Elsa's desk and rifles through it for pen and paper supplies.

Once gathered, Anna plops back on the bed and starts to write furiously on the pad of paper she rests on her knee as she recites aloud.

"_Dear Elsa_," Anna starts, chewing on the end of the fancy pencil she'd found in one of Elsa's neat drawers.

"_Kristoff is in his 'righteous romancer' mode and wants to marry me now!"_ Right out of the starting gate, bluntly honest Anna's hand writes that plea for her sister/ best friend/ better conscience almost automatically on its own.

Then, with a girlish giggle at the humor invoking statement, the rest of Anna's letter goes into detail about her upcoming wedding to said-impatient Kristoff that would be irrevocably postponed until Elsa arrived.

"_Please come home soon…"_ The more emotional entreaty is whispered on Anna's moist from tears lips as she seals the missive's envelope addressed to '_Queen Elsa of the Enchanted Forest' _with a kiss.

Then the lively ginger – looking more like a guilty schoolgirl than a royal queen in her bare feet, disheveled nightie, and bedraggled hair – scurries down the flight of steps in the dusky dawn to place her letter on the official-looking 'Queen's Dispatch' mail table at the base of the stairs in the Great Hall.

_Magic element on sick leave or not, I'll send my fastest guardsmen to deliver this note up to you in no time, Elsa! Hey! What're the perks of being Queen if I don't throw my weight around every now and then?_

"Ooh-oops!" Mighty Queen of Arendelle or no, Anna was still a little clumsy as she over-calculated and knocks the delicate flower vase down where it sat next to the silver tray for the letters on the table.

"Huh? Anna? You couldn't sleep either, huh?" A mellow voice catches with one hand the valuable porcelain vase and rights it onto the little round table in the hall without missing a beat.

There was her savior, Kristoff Bjorgman, Anna's hunky mountainman of a fiancé in his olive green nightrobe, emerging in surprise from the Arendelle Library doorway when his keen ears picked up the commotion.

He had apparently been up and at it all night in the quiet reference room on this pre-dawn morning.

"Kristly? What were you doing in Papa's Library this early? Looking up something in our letter 'C' encyclopedia? I'm surprised Olaf hasn't spirited them all away. Must be important for you to be researching this time of the morning, looking so fine in your nightrobe." Anna makes the comment in a whisper, having little to no embarrassment to be caught seen by her guy in such an unkempt state of sleepwear. Especially if it meant she could view him in his guacamole lime yummy one.

Her curiosity outweighed both that and her sad exhaustion when Anna's keen eyes spy the Encyclopedia Britannica's third volume tucked in the blond Ice Harvester's arm.

"I…umm…No, not that important…Just…uh…studying some of the books to check out some stuff, umm… 'cause Sven looks like he might be coming down with, uh, con-junk-ti…Ummm…Con-junc-ti-vitis. Yeah. Sven's got a bad case of uh, that." After a wild scan of the previous page's ocular pink eye disease, Kristoff guiltily slams shut the reference book he had really been looking up the duties of being a Prince 'Consort'.

It had taken the down-to-earth boy a while to get used to that idea, but since Elsa had remained in the Enchanted Forest for close to a year now, with only a few sparse visits, it was looking like Anna would permanently have to maintain her duties here as Queen.

And that meant that if he was going to marry Anna and be her husband like he so wanted to— for years now, Kristoff would be required to step up to his unexpected and undesirable role as the Queen of Arendelle's partner.

Which he had heard Councilor Kai discussing with the Archbishop on his recent visit, would put this orphaned hardworking lad in the inimitable role of something called a 'Prince Consort'.

Now, Kristoff may not have been educated in regular schooling – nor could he be called 'worldly' in the ways of woman wooing, for that matter, either – but his adopted Troll Mom Bulda made sure he could both read and write, even the big, snobbish words.

So, Kristoff had a pretty basic idea of what a Queen's 'consort' meant. The hands-on type of guy just was too darn embarrassed to ask anyone _what else_ a grand 'Prince Consort' would have to _do _in the kingdom.

The more his testosterone filled hormones pestered Anna about consolidating their wedding day, the more Kristoff then had to scramble to once and for all investigate what would be expected of him as Prince Consort to the Queen of Arendelle.

_It's sounding like the opposite of me from what I've read. What if I blow it?_

_All I know is that I'm crazy lucky to have you, my brave and beautiful, gorgeous Anna. But are you, as _**_Queen_**_, just plain crazy to have _**_me_**_? Sometimes I wish that you and I could just sneak off back to Troll Valley and get married without all this royal pomp and circumstance._

_But I realize you have your duties, and I totally will support you in making the right choices for your kingdom, Baby. Either way, I will love you with all my might, Anna, 'til the day I die._

_So I _**_need_**_ to marry you._

"He-eyy, Kristly? Earth to Kristoff! Did you just zone out there on me? I thought I was the dizzy one in the early morning." Anna obviously had been trying to call her deep in thought fella to attention as she waves a hand in front of his deliriously lovesick eyes. "I was just saying that I hope Sven feels better soon."

"Oh, yeah, Sven. Sorry about that, Anna. Just thinking about you and me." The big blond sentimentally brushes several loose ginger strands of Anna's hair back behind her suddenly reddening ears.

"So have I, Kristly." Anna says breathily, taking a dangerous step towards her mountainman to be sandwiched between the stair post and his heavily breathing chest in just her light pale green nightie. "You and me. And our imminent wedding." Fearless Anna smiles as her lips seemed to enjoy stressing that last word that her young man has been eagerly awaiting for months.

"Our imminent wedding?" _Gulp_. Now the nervous one, Kristoff's voice cracks to a high C when his 'Feistypants' lives up to her moniker and runs a hand up to his bare chest peeking through his loosed nightrobe to tickle it.

"You've got that right. I've been thinking a lot lately. I have been so rotten to you, Kristoff, keeping you waiting this long as I got settled into being Queen. I'm not sure if I'll ever really get used to this all change. But one thing that never has changed is how I am sure about _you_. You always know me better than I know myself, Kristly. And you're so right about it being time. That's why I've been up writing this letter to Elsa to come home soon. Then we can get married, ASAP." Anna explains as she picks up the envelope from her dispatch table and waves it in front of Kristoff's crimson face.

"Let me take it up to her in my new racing sled. It'll be a great test for it and we'll be faster than the normal Arendelle mail service for sure! Whoo-whee! I'll go on a ride for my beautiful bride!" The big musclebound blond easily scoops up Anna by her tiny waist and swings her around in the air with a fun rhymed _joik_.

Kristoff had been patiently waiting for his gal's matrimonial green light these nine months or so since he mustered the guts to propose. And this journey to fetch his future sister-in-law from her caretaking of the other four elements would give his invigorated senses something useful to do in the meantime.

And at a safe distance from the castle he was thus far innocently cohabiting with his gorgeous and willing fiancée.

"Didn't you say Sven wasn't feeling well?" Anna just manages to sputter out her worry for her Rangifer friend's well-being.

"Nothing a few hundred kilometers' drive out in the wide open North country in this fine summertime couldn't cure, my love!" Gaining confidence with each word, Kristoff announces a little too loudly. But an amused Anna shushes him with a hand clamped over his mouth, lest he wake up their longtime advisor Minister Kai or Captain Mattias, the family's recently reinstated Captain of the Guard.

"If Sven and I start out right now, we'll be there in no time, and bring back Elsa quicker than you can say 'I do', I promise! That'll give you time, _your Majesty, _to set our marriage in the Church, with all the fixins, into motion, as only you can, Baby." Tossing off his green robe over Anna's mass of ginger curls head after getting so hot under the collar on this Summer dawn, Kristoff leans down to land a smacking wet kiss on the current 'Queen' of Arendelle's lips beneath the chaotic orange and green mess.

Then he snatches the letter from the deliriously smiling girl's fingers before her Ice Harvester high tails it out the door towards his reindeer's stall in the barn at full speed.

"But you're not even dressed." Watching an eagerly animated Kristoff practically trip over his own big square slippered feet down the path, Anna chuckles at how just one word from her could make her bare-chested guy in his jammie pants so spontaneously impetuous.

_He's in love._

_Just like me._

_Please make those dreams of love come true for us soon, Elsa. I need you here to be my sister so we can hold on tight to each other again…_

By the time Kristoff had told Sven of the abrupt trip north and saddled up the reindeer to the newly built, not yet even varnished racing sleigh the mountainman had personally designed, Anna had his bags packed.

"Here's a basket of food leftovers I found in the larder and water I filled in those canteens you gave me for our hikes to the mountains. I packed the few changes of road traveling clothes you own in this rucksack, Kristly. Definitely gotta get you some new undies for when I'm gonna do the laundry for my new husband." Anna giggles at the humorous memory of laughing as she rifled through Kristoff's meager drawers of stitched-up drawers, holey big knit socks and tattered working man's clothing after she snuck into his room just down the hall from hers to gather his traveling bags for him.

"Yeah…laundry for your new husband." Kristoff was sensitive and sweet enough to still blush at the notion of his Anna rummaging though his intimate articles of clothing enough to be familiar with their holey shabbiness.

Then her offer to wash them too was blowing his beyond embarrassed mind.

"I'll be back in two shakes of a reindeer's tail, Baby." Kristoff shakes off his humiliation to envelope his trembling lady in a big bear hug embrace when he notes how Anna had that far-off look in her eyes when she gazed northward.

"And your sister will be leading the way home." He adds, glad that brought a bright smile to his sweetheart's face as he mounts his sleek little two-seated racing sled Kristoff so dubbed 'Baby' in Anna's honor.

"Thank you, Kristly! I love you!" With a bolstering kiss planted on her fiancé's lips, Anna was so grateful to have such a caring, understanding guy who knew her life could never be complete without her beloved sister to watch her take the next big step in it.

"That's why you're gonna marry me!" The kiss inspired blond young man calls out to psyche himself for this long, lonesome journey ahead as Sven and 'Baby' speed away. "Watch out for her while I'm gone, Olaf!" He yells back to the blurry-eyed, eye rubbing snowman who appears beside Anna at the rear courtyard in the early summer Midnight Sun morn.

But Kristoff knew he was never alone, with good friends like Sven at his side and sweet Anna's love close to his heart all the while. After all she was his true north.

* * *

Hello, my dear Frozen Again friends!

This week has been a whirlwind for all of us in the Frozen universe, with the new 'Frozen 2' movie throwing quite a few chilled monkey wrenches into our story's previously explored past, particularly concerning Elsa & Anna's parents.

If you've been following my sequel series –(we were that close to the 3rd book's happy ending wedding of Hans and Elsa, I'm taking a little pause from!) –Queen Iduna's singing- _the writers too include her as a gifted soprano in the movie_\- had played a mystical part of possessing healing powers due to her exposure in Corona as a girl to the Rapunculous sunflower's magic.

However, now that Disney has chosen for Queen Iduna to be of native Northuldra lineage, complete with some incredible 5th elemental bridge between the element spirit and humans, I've got some more rewriting to tackle.

But first, I think we'll go waaayy back to the beginning of my long tale with a little prequel to fill in how before my novel starts, Elsa has returned back to Arendelle from being the protector of the Enchanted Forest.

Her loving little sister was terribly missing her Elsa as much as the Ice Queen has been homesick and missing her, too. Anna's apparently been stringing Kristoff along from setting a wedding date, but it's high time they did! So Kristanna's wedding (how Book 1 of 'Frozen Again'– 'Faith, Hope, and Love' pretty much began ;) is the perfect foil for a certain big sister to come home, right?

Looks like weary of being 'Queen' Anna has some plans to try to keep her beloved best friend Elsa close, so she can hold on tighter to her!

After all, Elsa belongs in her home, with her dear ones near to love and support her, not sentenced to live in some far off distant kingdom of isolation! We all thought the Queen of the Ice had learned better than to conceal herself and her heart away, practically alone and so far away, separated from Anna again, now even worse in the far corners of her country, that needs her steady hand.

And maybe our Elsa can finally be allowed that happy ending of a normal life full of happiness and love and family she's prayed for with a certain handsome young Prince of the Southern Isles who deserves a second chance too, after being reformed with the Lord's forgiveness in true atonement…

So, I heartfully thank you for holding on tight to 'Frozen Again' through these necessary prequel rewrites I'll be weaving throughout the many chapters to keep our dearly loved 'Frozen Again' sapient to the wonderful fairytale of romance and Sisterly love of the 'Frozen' phenomenon going!

God keep you and all you love in our wonderful country safe and prosperous on this Thanksgiving Day the Almighty has blessed us all with!

Love and friendship,

HarukaKou

p.s. Did you see some reference to Kristloff's stunning 'Lost in the Woods' lyrics in this first installment of this prequel leading into 'Faith, Hope and Love'? Hunky Jonathan Groff really knocked it out of the park as the best song of the new movie! I love his smoothie mellow voice to kibbles and bits! He makes it all worthwhile!

p..p.s. As always, would love to hear your reviews! ^_^


	2. Part 2: The River of Memories

_Here is the second part of the prequel between the Frozen 2 movie and the start of my 'Frozen Again Trilogy'. Thanks for reading as we right some story holes to bridge between where our tale of romance and adventure and happy endings begins, dear Frozen friends! — HarukaKou_

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_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

**"Frozen Again Prequel"**

"**And Now These Three Remain****"**

**Part 2: **

**"The River of Memories"**

_**Eclipsed in the Enchanted Forest, that same morning…**_

There was a reason that this place in the northernmost regions of mainland Norway, between where the Land of the Midnight Sun touched its Finnish neighbor to the cold North, was long ago dubbed '_Yksinäisyyden Linnoitus'_ – the legendary Fortress of Solitude.

Along the magical _Ahtohallan_ _Joen_ (Ice frost River) ran a series of caves that had been lost to time for centuries. They were both frightening and alluring at the same time, as there reflected hundreds, if not thousands, of memories of the past for anyone who dared to stroll through and stare into its dark beauty.

The aurora borealis jewel-studded lady in white and lilacs was one such brave soul who now sat upon the lonely throne amid the _jään pakkasta_ _luola_ (icy frozen caverns) along the River of Ahtohallan.

She often found herself diverting whatever leisure time she had in watching these memories of the past flow by her, amidst preserving the land and keeping the peace between the cantankerous Earth Giants and the other three mischievous, easily set off elementals.

For one so young, hers was a convoluted past full of so many major events that shaped not only her life, but that of this nation and her future to rule its secrets as well, albeit afar from her home kingdom.

_So very far away from Anna and all the Arendellians I have come to love…_

No longer Queen of Arendelle, Ice Queen Elsa had fully taken on her role as the 'Guardian of the Enchanted Forest'. But that could not satisfy her warm heart even amidst all her matured power in this cold ice realm of isolation.

For her heart that beat with love and pride for the people of her hometown and the beloved sister she had left behind felt so detached and remote here.

_Our home, Anna…_

As she slowly walks along the endless caverns of the Ahtohallan she had mastered without fear, Elsa looks to her own childhood memories. There were youthful times in Arendelle spent with her sister and parents, forever captured as frozen ice statues which stood as silhouettes of precious moments gone by.

She and Anna were tiny little girls in crystalline, running through the leaves in the autumn time, building snowmen in the winter snows, playing hide and seek indoors under the covers and building castles made of pillows and curtain rod sheets.

Those were the sweetest memories for Elsa with her energetic, fun-loving little sister who brought such happiness to she and her parents' lives since the day Anna was born.

Anna had become Elsa's best friend and soulmate, and meant more to her than anyone else in the entire world, and Elsa cherished every moment – as few as they were in their limited years together– spent with her sister.

Then Elsa found herself a little more tentative and quick-paced to walk past the next tense visions of her hard-fought early youth after the sunshine of those happy days had ebbed to the fateful night where she and Anna were playing in the snow in the Throne Room.

The ice crystal memories were almost cruel to replay the recollection which Elsa vividly remembered in her mind's eye. The one where Anna got horribly hurt when Elsa's awakening frozen powers had blasted her darling, playful little sister in the head.

It was an accident, but a still shaken by the reminiscence Elsa never could forgive herself for allowing it to happen to her most special friend.

The next cryo-encased memory engraved in her mind was of she and her parents desperately standing before the helpful Rock Troll leader, GranPabbie, seeking advice on how to heal the unconscious child Anna. That terrible night was when her kindhearted, but just as confused father had to make the tough decision to divide the inseparable siblings from that day forward.

So Elsa would quickly tiptoe past the next sad annals of her life. They were replete with mornings full of tall stacks of books in learning of their country's history with her tutor Councilor Kai; endless ice control afternoon training sessions with patient Papa in front of the fireplace; and late night piano lessons in the music room with her quiet, songful Mama.

Those flash images of those she loved agonizing over her early youth were frozen in time behind her. But Elsa could see now in retrospect that all the scenes of her life had silhouettes of that little braided sister peering down the halls, longingly hopeful to be a part of Elsa's world.

And loving her all the while as she prayed Elsa would open the door and let her into her life again one day.

But Elsa never felt she was ready to, disappointing her little sister no end.

As the years progressed, there were icy visions of Queen Iduna still singing that haunting melody as lullaby to calm her eldest girl whenever Elsa struggled with the first glimpses of her ultimate power that she would come to wield someday.

It wasn't merely the torment of not being able to control the cryokinetic magic flowing through her veins that she was born with that bothered Elsa. It wasn't all the innumerable pairs of gloves gifted each Christmas and birthday meant to warm her, nor the unwearied guidance of control her good hearted Papa had attempted to teach Elsa from her adolescence into puberty. It was not the softly lullabying mother standing behind him in the background, saying nothing, though there was such care and worry and anxiety etched all over her loving face that broke Elsa's heart to view again now.

There were childhood echoes of the other girl, the vivacious ginger left often to her devices, all alone and ignored in Arendelle Castle, save for a few servants and Kai, Gerda, Johanne beside her always busy parents as she bounced through the silent rooms.

Watching the hours on that large grandfather clock tick by, toddler Anna was an endearing icy echo lying at the foot of that big 'ol clock, wishing with every second that her big sister would come out of that room and play with her soon.

But Elsa, growing up in fear, let her sister down every time.

Nonetheless, young Anna never gave upon her, though she only saw glimpses of Elsa every now and then before she was shut out looking into her sister's door for far too many years.

These past regret ice chains she herself had forged from fear and doubt made Elsa want to cry now for that forsaken, lonely child whose optimism endured through all the rejection anyway.

As she moves a little further down the catacomb the next 'living' ice sculpture of memories made Elsa's smile wipe away those tears. Each Christmas, an indefatigable Anna would deliver her snowman inspired card which featured their mutual friend Olaf, that the young girl had created in the simplicity and love of her childish heart for her dearest friend/best buddy hidden away from her.

Little Anna, as adorably depicted in this ice with her wild, stocky braids flying out on either side of her head, would scoot down flat on the floor. Then she'd count to ten in wait after she slid each message under the door accompanied by her special musical knock, hoping one of these times Elsa would open the door.

There were even some scattered memories there that Elsa didn't recognize of her parents' nightly torment and worry for her that the Ahtohallan somehow could reveal through the veil of their love for her, perhaps.

But the one moment in her life that Elsa probably found herself standing and staring at most often, having some months to explore the Hall of Reflections now, was the one she regretted most of them all.

It was from the painful time when their dear parents – who meant the world to Anna and Elsa both – were lost at sea and first pronounced deceased. Elsa, beyond devastated inside her room in her own grief and fear, had neglected her little sister going through the same agony on the outside of the door.

Though the braided girl was begging for just one hug of reassurance, one embrace of familial love from her big sister to make everything all right again, Elsa never emerged.

That frosted forever scene of the two sisters weeping, heart wrenched at the sudden loss of their beloved Papa and Mama.

Both heartbroken females sat alone after sinking down to the floor to hug their respective knees on either side of that wall of separation in a recollection that shattered the Ice Queen's heart each time she viewed it.

That was because Elsa knew, in this most distressing moment was when her little sister, who loved as she lived – _vibrantly_, needed her most. But Elsa then caught up in her self-fear and sorrow was not able to respond.

So she let Anna down.

Again.

Elsa watches with tears in her eyes the subsequent awful scene of Anna standing at the empty gravesite, saying goodbye to those they loved the most in the world, alone. What was even more tragic was the grieving teenager all in black was by herself, without the sister who should have shared in her anguish, as well as encouragement in their lives moving on.

All those chances to be loved and to give love in return as a sister in hard times were wasted by Elsa's self-conscious doubts of her ability to hone her power enough to never harm her baby sister again.

Here in the ice cavern, Elsa witnessed Anna's bravery and perseverance once again during the journey her younger sister embarked upon to follow Elsa up the North mountain.

On that difficult, frightening trek, Anna never wavered, even after Elsa told her to stay safe and secure in Arendelle so she could be herself, alone but free at last.

But what was freedom worth if it was to be spent in loneliness? Her little sister's ultimate sacrifice came when that ambitious Prince of the Southern Isles took it upon himself, in his own fear and that of the entire kingdom, to stop its newly coronated, unrestrained Queen.

Elsa could not really blame anyone for her loss of control then. Hans' choice to end the dangerously raging winter by any means was what Elsa herself wished, in her despair at letting Anna down one last time upon the frostbitten fjord.

But it was not in isolation, nor lonely fear Elsa learned the truth that set her free. It was through Anna's example of caring, generous love that the Good Lord had instilled in each heart to make every lifetime of His children on earth fulfilling.

It was that bittersweet memory of sister embracing frozen sister whose tender heart's act of true love taught Elsa all about the strength of togetherness.

That freely shared, Godly wisdom finally brought the two sisters home again to live in that peace and joy Anna's faith instilled in Elsa for three glorious years of her life spent in her happy dwelling place of Arendelle.

The joy Anna boisterously prescribed to a no longer frozen in fear Elsa to live lovingly hand in hand, building a bright future, gave Elsa such happy memories of the past few years, too.

Birthday cakes, sunflower picnics, Olaf floating high to light the star on their Christmas tree where sisterly togetherness was realized to be the greatest gift of all.

Elsa thought those days in the sun would never end with her stalwart supporter and her other half—best friend and sister at her side. Anna's exuberance to see life as a new adventure every day blessed their castle home with peace and excitement.

And Elsa's heart felt so warm, never to be cut off to the realm of cold fear ever again.

Until that unstable calling shook her world with an overwhelming curiosity that was said to kill both cats and contentment.

The eerie voice that echoed in her mind drove Elsa away from that hearth of home as the autumn winds unlocked ghostly phantoms of the past and brought her out of her happy homeland's comfort with untold questions into the unknown.

And at the end of yet another incredible journey full of old wounds and the painful truth's discovery laid a new responsibility on her and Anna both.

Elsa – who could only have accomplished those mystical feats of bold awakening due to the constant love and support of her courageous sibling at her side – had realized that she had chosen a path of lonely isolation again, despite Anna's pleas to stay with her.

Or more precisely, it had been chosen for her.

_Yes, I know I have found the answers I have always been searching for, Mama – and I know who I am now. You tried to tell me in that lullaby, but I didn't understand then. I was born to be the bridge between our kingdom and this Realm of the Spirits. I am the fifth element of Harmony tying the others together because you and Papa had forged that link, through your self-sacrifice and love for one another and this country._

_But at least __**you**__ had __**one another**__ to rely on. Don't you see? I feel so alone here._

That tiny voice inside Elsa's aching head and heart had caused her to tread yet again to the veil of her own memories that were of those she cherished and loved.

And left behind in Arendelle so far away.

If just to be close to the warmth of her family and friend's love, even in this the cold, distant, abstract way, Elsa would brave the ghostly Ahtohallan's depth below her new realm's Fortress of Solitude.

The astute Ice Queen had studied the mystical ice sculptures that rose along the River of Memories' banks so many times that the visages of her parents, when her powerful mind reached out for them, were easily displayed.

From their youthful teenage first meeting here in mystical Northuldra, to their blossomed love through an amazing selfless act of her young mother, to the uniting of two worlds - Spirit and Humanity - through that bond of true love that the Spirits of Earth, Wind, Water and Fire came together to respect with a tentative peace at last.

But that fragile peace Elsa had disturbed in her wandering heart's search to find her true place in this world, that Anna had bravely mended by righting a past wrong misdeed, against all odds, because it was '_the right thing to do'_, came at a high cost.

However, now that she had marched into the unknown's call and her royal family's convoluted past had been revealed, Elsa had started to wonder if her heart had left too much behind, within the solitude she feared once again would engulf her here, despite her reassurances to a worried Anna.

_I wonder if you're feeling the same way as I do, Anna._

After a respectful nod 'goodnight' as she walks away from the ice sculptured scene of her parents embracing aboard that ill-fated ship, Elsa treasured them even more so now that she understood better how much they loved her.

For the King and Queen of Arendelle had lost their lives trying to seek out answers to help their troubled daughter adjust to life with these new powers manifested in her.

"Thank you both for loving us so through it all." The long white-blonde flowing haired young woman whispers to the outline of her tall, strong Papa with his arms forever wrapped tightly around her petite, slender Mama as she strolls down the icy memory lane towards one more vision that had just suddenly appeared.

There was Anna, an adult now, so stiff and uncomfortable in her queenly gown seated upon Arendelle's lonely throne.

But, as Elsa cautiously saunters around the opposing side to get a closer view, she sees Queen Anna was sitting back to back with the Ice Queen herself perched on her ice throne here in the Fortress of Solitude that she'd made her abode as Guardian of the Enchanted Forest.

The expression on either maturing young woman's resigned, dutiful face was not only of secret discontent, but also of a distant longing for that sisterly assurance behind their icy reflective orbs that involuntarily, irresistibly were laced with a lonely sadness as well.

"Oh, Anna. How I wish I could have one of your warm grizzly bear hugs right now." Elsa murmurs. But her embrace of the cold, immeasurably unreactive ice statue memory of her disconsolate little sister was an unfulfilling reminder of that moment in Elsa's horrified reminiscence when her freezing Anna's heart had been fulfilled before her terrified eyes five summers ago.

But the pure hearted young ginger Princess' selfless act of true love then to jump in front of that redheaded Prince's long sword to save her sister had ended the Eternal Winter in Elsa's confused heart.

"Please God, don't let me walk down this path of making her sad and lonely due to my ignorance of how to love properly. Please give me the strength to never let Anna down again." Just as, again now with a heavy heart, the warmth in her soul pervading for her sweet Anna opens another avenue of magic for the Ice Queen as she whispered the emotional prayer.

Somehow, in answer to the supplication for her heartfelt plea, one single teardrop falls from Elsa's clear eyes that were devotedly gazing upon the ice sculpture of her baby sister sitting uncomfortably on the Arendelle throne she never wanted to rule.

The River of Ahtohallan swirls and whirs as if in response to this magical young woman's quiet prayerful request and suddenly surges to life with the mystical equine Water Spirit Nokk to raise his proud head above the glacier's surface to her in approval.

Her glassy tear that had dropped to the ice sculpture of Anna's translucent hand forms into a sparkling reflective snow globe, filled with enchanted water and a special aurora borealis light of sisterly love.

'_Water has memory.' _A wise snowman once said.

Elsa smiles at the Nokk she had formed a special bond with and gathers the snowglobe the wild water horse she had tamed aided in the creation thereof up into her trembling fingers.

Via the flowing waves of the Aren Fjord, Elsa gazes into the Summertime scene of Arendelle, in full color bloom. The vivid replay of recent memories of her sister soulmate flood across the AB infused snowglobe from just this morning through the looking glass of her washbasin.

Her dulled, cheerless eyes instantly brighten to see Anna with bedhair again, as Elsa glimpses the stop motion 'replay' of the ginger young woman chewing on the end of her pencil as she wrote a fervent letter to her absent big sister.

Then there was a fast forward glimpse of Anna's early morning meeting with her fiancé Kristoff.

He, in fast motion, immediately jumped on his reindeer sled, hitting the road to traverse the great distance to deliver the special post letter missive inviting Elsa to come home to their wedding.

But the most important part of this recent memory viewing snow globe was that Elsa could hear Anna's innermost thoughts, too.

Anna was hoping for her older sister to be reinstated as the true Arendelle leader again, at least for a time while she and her mountainman sweetheart were first wed. The younger sister longed to be just the second Princess again with all the opportunities to be a new wife without all of the kingdom responsibility hoopla.

"Oh, my poor Anna. You never would complain aloud. Not even to me. As I was so busy growing in my powers way up here, I never thought about what it would be like for you and your point of view. I thought it was best for me to step aside and give you the chance to shine, as I know you would for the people of Arendelle with your great love, Anna. But I would be a fool to not read between the lines now that it's not what you ever wanted to be, my dearest one. We have brought peace to our land again, little sister. I've made my discoveries about my powers, and myself. I have to stop being so selfish and realize that it's high time for me to be **your** big sister, Anna, instead of the other way around." Elsa says definitely in the silent cavern to the river that seemed to becalm its churning and upheaval at her heartfelt decision at last.

"I've been here long enough to grow into who I am, who I was meant to be, Mama, learning so much of Nature here with your kinsmen and mine. But now I think I'm ready to go home to Papa's kingdom I love and the people there I cherish, at least for a little while. Anna needs me." Holding her head high as she announces her intentions to the Ahtohallan that spoke to her often in her mother's sweet soprano voice, Elsa couldn't restrain the last little sentence of defiance. "And I'm not going to let her down this time!"

As she turned to leave the Fortress, Elsa's blue eyes inexplicably are drawn to glance upon the – was it new? - icy statue memory of the tall and slender Prince of Denmark racing into her Ice Palace upper floor area. He was wearing the Arendelle gray cloak she always admired for how fine a figure it cut for a soldier.

Elsa barely gave his comely visage a second thought, as Prince Hans' uncanny placement in either her memories – _or Anna's, perhaps?_ – were quite disturbing in number.

But those ten words left ringing in her head stop Elsa still in her tracks again now as they did then, so powerful and commanding, yet sympathetic and tender with the expressive phrase that caused the Ice Queen to immediately listen and take heed.

"_Queen Elsa! Don't be the monster they fear you are!"_

That most critical sentence at the most critical juncture saved the frightened into violence young Ice Queen from committing an unholy act against man and God by willfully taking the life of another, simply out of fear and dread.

In retrospect, listening to the words and the way that he honestly spoke them, Elsa was sure that the Prince of the Southern Isles did not think her a monster at all, even in that moment when everyone else in the kingdom believed she was.

Even she herself.

"_Unredeemable monster!" _

Elsa was ashamed to next witness the gleeful glimpse of herself at a charades game when she, Kristoff, and Olaf had been trying to guess Anna's playacting where the key word was 'Villain'.

_Why would I ever utter such a cruel, unkind thing about my fellow man? Redemption is a gift of the Lord to all, not just those I choose. I too am a sinner, not Queen Omnipotent._

Elsa had many hours of sleepless nights to ponder the inscrutable question that was Prince Hans Westergaard. Certainly, he did so many wrong things concerning Anna that caused her big sister to lash out and call Hans an 'unredeemable monster' in jest. Indeed, she had mostly said it only because she was trying to emulate what Anna would think and would say for her charade. She knew Anna considered Hans a monster and so she called the response she thought Anna was looking for.

But reflecting now on what the Prince of the Southern Isles did five Summers ago– caring for the people of Arendelle, protecting them from the threat of Eternal Winter he begged her to end, saving her life by carrying her back to the Castle, then making the hard choice to stop her before she destroyed the nation when the Ice Queen declared she could not control herself.

After all, Elsa tried to uphold the tenets of Christianity her devout parents taught her growing up. Sometimes, in the quiet of her room, that doctrine was all that kept her sane sometimes when all young Elsa wanted to do was scream and give up. But then she could at least hide herself away under the refuge of Almighty God's wing.

Elsa regretted ever applying the unjust and untrue term of being beyond the Lord's hope to even her worst enemy.

For no soul was lost entirely when there was still that light of hope, no criminal was too far beyond help should he truly ask for forgiveness. That was because Jesus Christ, as go-between for His earthly brethren sinners and Holy on high God the Father – took away **all** sins, not only certain indiscretions which mankind picked and chose as being worthy of salvation.

Besides, how could Elsa blame Hans so intensely when she was the one guilty of inflicting so much of the heartache and pain on Anna and her people herself in her confusion and rebellion?

So, instead of quickly moving past and brushing off scenes of the man she once reviled, even to the point of lashing out and jokingly calling him 'unredeemable', this time, Elsa pauses to address his undeniably magnificent physique and implicit eyes which always seared into her soul, even when he was just a frozen statue.

"Why do you of all people, in this moment, remind me of that man who's been haunting my dreams these past months? Why won't you just leave us alone?" Her disbelieving eyes slit at Prince Hans' ice sculpture, Elsa breathlessly asks him in guilty whispers, feeling vulnerable at how this singular prince was yet able to disturb her trembling heart, even when he was just a frozen solid memory.

"Please…"

So the age-old question remains: '_Dost the lady protest too much?'_

Whenever a pale white Elsa passed by the gallant figure of Prince Hans Westergaard's ingrained memory ice scenes, such as when he faced down Marshmallow with the Arendelle guardsmen, she usually steered far clear to the other side of the Ahtohallan Riverbank.

She would put up her regal little nose high up in the air, as if to ignore his iridescent prismatic ice figure who seemed to glisten at her in the darkness this morning more than any other as her former self in the memory scene dashed behind her Ice Palace doors.

But today she appraises him with interest. It was if somehow, someway, today some part of him in her mind's eye was changing.

Almost shifting, even beginning to melt…

Was that because something else inside the Ice Queen's no longer cold heart was awakening enough for her to be challenged to let go of her distress of Prince Hans – or was it more the distress of her own heart? Elsa was disturbed by how many times she thought of that young man in particular as she traversed along the river of memories he so populated.

Unexpected. Uncouth. Unfeeling.

But '_Unredeemable'…_?

_That was an unkind, horrible word, an un-Christian, judgmental statement to even think, never mind say, even in jest. I was wrong, Lord, please forgive me. I am not one to judge another man, much less someone whose crimes were a complication to my troubled problem of not facing my fears. _

"Please forgive me, Prince Hans. I'm ready to let go of my blame for you, when so much of our poor choices was my fault." Gazing down upon the pile of ice shards she had callously disintegrated when she first entered the Ahtohallan, Elsa almost tearfully whispers to the empty place in the scene of Anna still bowing on the dock where she first met the Danish Prince.

As she was about to exit the cavern of memories catacombs after she climbed her icy staircase, Elsa spies in her peripheral vision a strange glimmer of light. It appeared as if her cryokinetics were working on their own, even out of the Ice Queen's cognizant doing.

She glances backwards to watch yet another regret she had in her rebellion and fear, make an unforeseen change.

That pile of ice shards that had lain on the cold riverbank ground for the past nine months – the remnants of the frozen memory of Prince Hans in a dashing bow, first introducing himself on the Arendelle pier to Anna that Elsa had offhandedly shattered when she first entered the cave, as if by some unseen force, now reconstitutes in a dazzling array of an aurora borealis light show.

Highly interested in this unique occurrence in this magical ice cave of memories, Elsa takes to her ice sled to investigate the miraculous happening.

She gazes critically at the fully replenished form of the tall, svelte, well-dressed icy statue. Elsa glazes a cool hand over Prince Hans' face of handsome features, over his pointed celestial nose in amazement, across his strong chin. She runs a finger down his perfect sideburns as she stares into Prince Hans' mesmerizing eyes.

Eyes, she was sure, held a teardrop in them now which she was certain had not been there the first time she gazed upon his fine cut figure.

"Do you shed a tear for me now?" The Ice Queen breathlessly stares at this once broken into a million pieces statue of the faulted man whose once again flawless face entreats her to no end.

Why was she even privy to count this as one of her memories? Was this not Anna's pivotal first meeting with the Prince?

Was it because his eyes that were formerly affixed towards Anna as he was about to make the elegant bow of a first impression before the Princess were now oddly trained on Elsa instead?

And on top of that, the aurora borealis glimmered a definite viridiscent shade of green in his eyes hailing a single teardrop to fall down Hans' frozen cheek.

The Prince of the Southern Isles' expressive eyes seemed to reach out to Elsa's once again as she remembered encountering him in the past before, pleading honesty down in the cell dungeon when he begged her to stop the Eternal Winter.

And again her heart skips a beat which Elsa's mind glosses over as being in reflective gratitude that her past sins and rash actions of fear could be righted again like shattered glass, healed by God's love.

So why not His Hand of Mercy upon this sinner as well?

"I, too, know what it means to be wayward and lost. So we two are not that very different, are we, Prince Hans?" Finally having someone to speak to who would understand her strained past, Elsa empathically smiles back at the irresistible charm of the repaired ice man.

The Danish 13th in line Prince was standing before Anna's ice memory again as Elsa looks back at the scene with a clear head full of recognized forgiveness at last.

And that mysterious tear formed in his eye finally falls to watch her leave the river of memories.

'_He who is without sin, cast the first stone.' That's how it goes, right? Who am I to judge another human being when I barely feel one myself here anymore in this Enchanted Forest?_

_I've tried and tried to think this could be the new me. This wild hair, loose dressed, unkempt woman, alone and running nearly barefoot in the endless wood maybe was who I was destined to be. But 'she's' not who I want to be nor who I really am deep down. Do I have a say in the matter? I know it's my duty, but…Maybe I don't want to be 'free' and alone anymore! Maybe I want to be more than the harmonizing element spirit of the ice._

_Maybe I want to be me again._

_How I wish to feel useful, purposeful to wake up every morning, do my duties as Queen—how I enjoyed the diplomacy and strategy of it— and seize the day that will be different from the one before, and the next different from the one before that! Even in simple ways, Anna always came up to my room every day of those three glorious years with some new idea or daring scheme to make our lives an exciting journey._

As she was yanking an ice comb through her wild mane of white-blonde hair to bend to her will this time, it begins to go vibrantly platinum blonde again as Elsa involuntarily begins to braid it while she inexplicably explains her woes to Prince Hans' silently listening ice sculpture.

"I want to feel alive as Anna's older sister and Queen for my people, a vital woman and not simply a Guardian caretaker running wild in a forest! If just for this short time of Anna's wedding, I wish to feel human again, not just have to play my dutiful role as the time forgotten Snow Queen all the time!" Elsa loudly announces in the empty catacomb as she tears her eyes away from inexplicably explaining her woes to Hans' ice sculpture she strangely opened up to.

That's when she notices in the newly created snow globe Kristoff's racing sled, that Anna said in her latest letters he was just starting to build, suddenly veer off at full racing speed when there was a huge tree trunk fallen across the entire road he was forced to brake too hard.

Apparently the new sleek sled was in need of a little more skid control tweaking, as it starts to spin out of control, taking a panicking Kristoff along for the ride – to Sven's broken reins horror…

"Don't worry, Anna. I've got this." With a final pat to her sister's pretty cheek in the memory of meeting this man of mystery Elsa had been enigmatically drawn to, encased in ice memories that were not her own, Elsa closes her eyes.

She sends a thick snow blast burst that arrests her future brother-in-law's dance with death in the summertime countryside in the midsection of her country.

"You've asked for me to be there with you in Arendelle again, Anna. And I refuse to disappoint you this time, little sister, by missing out on a single one more of your precious days."

"I **will** be there for her wedding. And, whatever it takes to continue my duty here, as well to our countrymen. I will sit on Arendelle's throne again, until you tell me you're ready to return. It's so very nice to be needed by the most important person in the world to me. When we're together, it's my favorite place to be, at any time of year, Anna."

With a warm sentimental smile to be fulfilling Anna's wishes for once, Elsa determinedly sheds her restricting mantle of Guardian of the Enchanted Forest. She transforms her shimmering white robes back into the pale blue crystalline shimmering Ice Queen gown that she created for herself years ago, right down to the stylish, glassy high heels of ice she felt so much more herself in.

Purposely striding out onto the surface of the glacier, Elsa holds the memory snow globe just created in one hand and with one flick of the other, she cryo-magically opens a portal to view the aurora borealis sparkling afternoon of the real world Anna was inviting her back to enjoy.

Summoning up her cryo-magic that she been sorely remiss in practicing at full power in this mystic labyrinth, Ice Queen Elsa uses her supernatural ice to walk through the magic snow globe to where she was needed to deflect the chaos ensuing for her poor friends.

Elsa awards a nod back to the ever-watchful Nokk, who had become a close companion standing guard at the River of Memories. She looks down where Bruni, the little salamander Fire Spirit, was at the ledge of the glacier smiling up at her feet snuggling against her cold ice shoes with the unspoken promise to keep the broody Water Spirit horse on his toes in her absence.

She pauses a few seconds to listen to the rumbling sounds of the sleeping Earth Giants pleasantly snoring in their undisturbed mountains on the outskirts of the Ahtohallen, giving a silent salute to the faithful Northuldra watchmen in the far distance who stayed to help observe the peace.

She closes her eyes and senses Gale, the great Spirit of the Wind who always had the daughter of Northuldra and Arendelle's back since she'd been here, softly paint her friend's path back home with all the colors of love and friendship in her gentle breeze.

With a silent farewell to her magic elemental companions, Elsa feels so free and liberated to revert back to being fully human once again.

The moment she steps foot outside the Enchanted Forest, her Snow Queen ultimate powers she wielded there return to her tingling with excitement Ice Queen gifted cryo-magic again.

And as Elsa once more feels gravity of gratifying normal flow of humanity's warm-blood in her veins outweigh the cold ice that was beginning to supercede into her lonely consciousness, she hears a Bible verse echo in her heart.

'_Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' - II Corinthians 3:17_

* * *

_**On the road, halfway between Arendelle and Northuldra….**_

_**CR-RA-SSSHHH!**_

'_Who am I, if I'm not your guy? Where am I if we're not together?! Up is down, day is night when you're not there! You're my only landmark, so I'm lost in the woods…wondering if you still care…'_

Hearing an old song of uncertainty eerily reverberate inside his warbled head, Kristoff Bjorgman thought he would never admit to being lost in the woods again.

But waking up as woosy as the thick snow drift that had thankfully softened the impact of his fast new sled with a huge fallen tree trunk which had fallen across the road in the night was not exactly the romantic Ice Harvester's idea of being in control of his life.

Particularly on this trip that would hopefully end his lonely nights spent wondering exactly when his sweetie would agree to finally be his forever wife and lover.

_Whoa_.

"Sven! Where are you?! Are you okay, Buddy?" Responsible Kristoff was at first startled to be flattened at the dashboard of his sled with flailing reins in his hands, snow slush packing him in.

Shaking himself fully awake, the experienced Ice Harvester quickly comes to consciousness with a lick of the reindeer's rough tongue across his knocked out cold face.

_**HOMN!**_

Sven positively answers back in his Rangifer low tone and nodding antlered head down towards his lifelong pal, with yet another slobber in gladness that Kristoff had finally woken up.

"Okay! Okay! That's enough! Don't drown me in reindeer slobber! I'm still in one piece, Sven!" The good-natured blond allows himself a chuckle at his pal's affectionate licks as he begins to dig himself out from the deep snowbank in the middle of July.

_Wait. Snow?_

But whatever the cause of the inclement weather was, it had blessedly halted his racing sled 'Baby' from crashing into the massive tree trunk strewn across the road, so Kristoff wouldn't complain.

"Praise the Lord for that most blessed discovery. How would I have explained to Anna if I came to her wedding without her groom with me? You have to be a little more careful of your speeding in the future, Mr. Bjorgman, if I'm to allow Anna to ride away from our castle in this new contraption of your own design." Elsa's 'pitchy' voice penetrates the snow embankment, strong and piercingly high.

Sven's ears cock back almost in pain at the elemental woman's sing-songy high pitch fashion which Elsa was becoming accustomed to addressing the four elements with.

"Elsa?! Should've figured you had a thing to do with this! Oh boy, am I glad you're here!" Kristoff answers his future sister-in-law as he was pulling himself by Sven's large antlers out of the pure white snow bank he had been snowed in.

"Are you really? That makes me feel almost…normal." Elsa asks with a pleased smile on her lips at her old friend's unchanged, casual tone in speaking to her that made her start to feel like a regular person again.

Okay, a somewhat different, gifted person of the Royal family perhaps. But this was about as close to being normal as Elsa ever got.

Nevermind the eternally wordless four Element Spirits she cohabited beside in the Enchanted Forest.

The nomadic Northuldra who stayed on in the Forest may have been kind and considerate to the Ice Queen, but they always kept an extremely respectful - _almost reverent_ – distance that Elsa found a bit disturbing.

Not just Yelana and the village elders either. The little children, Hanimaren, and even Ryder when he came back for visits had all been raised with too much deference for nature to treat the 'Legendary Fifth Element' Ice Queen on more familiar terms.

Not a one of them, after almost a year of Elsa living closeby their _siida_ (village), felt comfortable enough to call her by her first name even!

So this pleasant chat with Anna's rustic, plebian guy was a wonderful change for Elsa.

"Sure. I was just on my way up to the Enchanted Forest to bring you this letter from Anna. But you've saved us the rest of the long trip, Sis! Anna said something was up with the usual channels you usually communicate by, so here I am." A smiling Kristoff explains to the elegant blonde woman as he is pulled to the roadside again by his reindeer friend.

After he hands the elegant beauty her sister's letter, Elsa blushes at the tall mountainman's rather too familiar address of 'Sis' that Kristoff felt entitled to, now that the marriage was assured.

Then Kristoff takes the opportunity of righting his sled named 'Baby' back to the main road upright and out from the snow bank with Sven's help to assess Elsa with a clinical eye.

Yes, Anna's sister was normally platinum blonde again. Thankfully that unsettling stark white-blonde free flow shock of hair coif was gone and Anna's older sister looked more like herself again. Way better than that final glimpse he had seen of the magical woman, all icy pale and wild white waving farewell as Elsa stood behind the prismatic, yet passable, veil of the Enchanted Forest's fortress that seemed to swallow her up as its new mistress.

No, Elsa was regally neat and stylishly graceful in her braid again, wearing her blue shimmering gown all the roving-eyed men in Arendelle had pleasingly gotten used to.

Elsa promised that she would visit Arendelle Castle often. But 'often' turned into only three short visits these nine months where both Elsa and Anna had been far too full-time busy becoming positioned in their new roles as Guardian of the Enchanted Forest and Queen of Arendelle to really indulge in the short and sweet time together.

After all, neither job description matched either girl properly, in Kristoff's honest opinion, so they each had to work harder at it.

Energetic and ready for adventure Anna was not at all comfortable cooped up inside the castle, day and night, signing boring papers, meeting countless diplomats, and reading innumerable documents. The lively girl full of boundless energy just had little to no patience for quietly sitting still, sifting through the minutiae of palace protocol, time after time trying Councilor Kai's patience no end.

And as for Elsa…

Although Kristoff had not been present in Elsa's day-to-day life so far in the wilderness North of their country where she was now, he had a strong feeling that the formerly proper and subdued, calmly introverted Queen was not thoroughly enjoying running barefoot in the wild outdoors.

The intuitive young man could sense it was not in Elsa's character to commune with nature on such hands-on terms. Nor would the shy platinum blonde young woman look forward to kibitzing with new relations of her mother's on her own, nor babysitting some touchy Element Spirits as much as his free-spirited ginger would have been up for the challenge in her quiet sister's place.

If only there was some way for logical Kristoff to reverse the positions for these two sisters he's come to know and love as his own family.

_Heck, as an orphan, I've got no folks in Arendelle, so I wouldn't mind coming up here every once in a while. Anna's not your typical indoor princess, so she'd fit right in with tent traveling nomadic life. It's halfway between Troll Valley and the mountains anyway, so living rough up here with these Northuldra with my Feistypants as my new bride wouldn't be too bad. After all, Sven and I were raised by mountainmen and Rock Trolls, so we're practically natives ourselves! If being in the working middle lower-class caste system anyways counts for Sven and me._ Kristoff smirks to himself with all that self-deprecating humor, never once feeling self-pity for his orphaned youth of not ever knowing who his parents were.

Maybe that was because this warmhearted lad always had the treasure of his lifelong companion Sven to grow up alongside and stand by him through thick and thin. And there were many kind people growing up to show Kristoff that he was loved as a child of God.

Even if no one else claimed him as their own, Kristoff understood he had a Heavenly Father above certainly watching over him and Sven always.

His old mountaineer friend and mentor Ragi had told Kristoff that when the boy was very young and asking questions of his origin and place in this world. And Kristoff had never forgotten the wise old mountainman's words since.

That thought kept the optimistic light in young Kristoff burning strong on many a frozen cold Norwegian night alone in the woods.

But even this passing idea of switching Anna to be more in her outdoorsy element – with the rowdy, grumpy elements his go-getter-gal could whip into shape, no doubt in the North – with Elsa more suited to Palace life of dutiful regal listening and stately rule in the South, Kristoff still wouldn't solve the genuine crux of the problem of the polar opposite in personality sisters.

Just one look in Elsa's face and icy eyes told sensitive Kristoff volumes of what she wanted most the world.

After all, it was the exact same gaze he saw in Anna's resigned eyes nearly every single day since she left Elsa behind in far-off Ahtohallan.

_I need to be with my sister again._

"Are you ready to go, Kristoff?" Breaking the Ice Harvester's thought track, Elsa looks up from Anna's letter which she neatly refold than replaces into its envelope with a barely audible sigh.

"Uhh…yeah, just as soon as – ugh! – Sven and I get this last – urgh – sled runner – ugh! – out of the mud and—" The muscle toned mountain man sputters out as he, all muddy and sweating on this particularly hot 70 degree plus Norwegian noonday, was exerting all of his might to dislodge the stuck in the permafrost mud steel sled runners and reins from their imprisonment beneath the snow.

That is, until the no longer preoccupied Ice Queen notices his struggle and merely had to raise her cryokinetic powerful hands to usher the trapped sled to rise evenly to the road.

Elsa magically returns 'Baby' to the road it had veered off in order to miss directly ramming into the massive tree trunk with a simple flick of her ice wielding hand.

"– sludge." Kristoff was never jaded enough to not be awed by his soon-to-be sister-in-law's incredible ice magic. After all, ice was still his life!

_That, and Anna._

"Then, shall we go? I hear there is a fairytale wedding that I've been holding up between a certain young ruler and her handsome Prince Consort." With an icy tickle under his chin, feeling playful Elsa teases the instantly blushing young man.

Kristoff clears his throat to hear the catty eyed blonde female denote him as both 'handsome' and soon-to-be a 'consort', after he had previously looked up in the dictionary what the high-faluting word meant.

_Whoa. Deep breath, Kristoff._

To Elsa's apparent, scrunched-nose disgust, Kristoff wipes his muddy hands on Sven's rear rump before he takes a gentlemanly place as carriage footmen to help Elsa into the sled.

With a little embarrassed giggle, Elsa accepts the wiped clean hand Kristoff gentlemanly had extended as she lets him help her into the two-seater sled.

"Anyone I know?" Kristoff asks was a little knowing smirk on his beyond relieved face to find Elsa not that weird and willing to come home without much of an argument on his part on how much Anna needed her home, way more than any grumpy elementals needed her to up there that he had been conjuring up in his head to convince her, along the ride here.

_Now I've got to go back to worrying how to be a first-rate husband for my Feistypants in just a few days' time, when we finally have the chance to get hitched…sigh…_

* * *

_Yksinäisyyden Linnoitus _– Fortress of Solitude in Finnish

_Ahtohallan_ _Joen_ \- Ice frost River in Finnish

_jään pakkasta_ _luola_ \- icy frozen caverns

* * *

Hello, Frozen Again Friends!

I hope you enjoyed episode two of this prequel to tie the ending of Frozen 2 to in with the start of my sequel book full of happy endings to come!

This Episode was more from Elsa's point of view side of the frozen country, once it was decided for Anna that Kristoff would go and pick up her sister for the wedding.

Elsa seems to be quite absorbed with the River of memories in certain statues there. (Or lack thereof! Wasn't it rather phenomenal how a certain cruelly destroyed ice statue was reconstituted after Elsa had some time to ponder the precious price of mercy? ;) That's the Elsa I like much better than the unforgiving, judgmental rash one, don't you?

And what do you think about my preference for Elsa to be back in her signature blonde platinum braid and original design blue ice dress? When she is in Northuldra's Enchanted Forest realm of magic she can be fully powered up in her mystical Ice & Snow Queen form.

But when she's back in Arendelle, she should be herself again. And that means fully human with special magic gifts to share in the warmth with those she loves around her, right?

Happy endings are on their way as we bridge the gap between the newest movie installment in my trilogy full of love and romance and adventure to come to the Arendelle sisters together side-by-side.

Thanks for the huge response to this prequel's first chapter, everyone! I'd love to hear all your reviews as we bridge together the Frozen 2 movie end with the start of our favorite 'Frozen Again' Trilogy here!

Thanks for reading!

God bless you!

HarukaKou


	3. Part 3: My Favorite Place to Be

_Happy holly jolly Merry Christmas Solstice tidings of good cheer at 'That Time of Year'! _

_Here is the third and final part of our prequel set between the 'Frozen 2' movie and the start of my 'Frozen Again Trilogy'. Thanks for coming along for the exciting ride's kick off! Merry Christmas, Frozen friends! - HarukaKou_

* * *

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

**"Frozen Again Prequel"**

** "And Now These Three Remain"**

**Part 3: **

**"My Favorite Place to Be"**

Staring longingly out the library window as the evening Midnight Sun starts to set in, Queen Anna had finished going through like a zillion pages of Arendelle wedding political protocol.

But she still failed to find the information she had been searching for.

"Argh…Do I have to invite every world leader and ruler of each nation? Or just the ones we're trading partners with? Won't the others who might soon be negotiating get angry if I don't? Or will that just make the ones who are our allies upset? I'm so confused! Ooh, Elsa would know! " Rubbing her eyes after a good scratch of her head, Anna stretches her bent over stiff shoulders.

She was wearing her mature looking black, dark teal green and violet gown that was stylishly draped across her torso with the autumn leaves design that so defined her unexpected reign.

But she didn't feel mature.

The young ruler had been busy all morning and late into the afternoon that she had forgotten to take a much-needed break for hours now.

Anna's quill nib had been penning so many Royal letters and documents that she thought her aching hand would fall off from all the effort, the bump blister already formed on her right hand writing finger palpably sore.

So Anna had ingeniously begun signing in her even less legible left hand the important agreements and steep stack of decrees she had 'okayed' with her trusted Royal Adviser, Counselor Kai, all the week before.

"I can't read a single word of this indecipherable one, Anna. Unless it is, perchance, in a foreign tongue's language – say Greek for instance? Oh, how I would find it irresistible to travel to Greece some day to see the plethora of historic demolished temples and ancient theatrical ruins, wouldn't you? Oh! Perhaps we can convince Kristoff to travel to the Parthenon or Acropolis and trek up Mount Olympus to see the gods like Hercules, Megara or even Phil for our honeymoon! Very intellectually romantic, don't you think, Anna?" Olaf had waddled into the Royal Library to inform Queen Anna that the dinner gong had already rung several times, and she had not yet shown up in the Dining Hall where everyone else was waiting for the Queen before they could start.

When Anna had simply stated that she was not hungry, the nosy snowman started on this harangue as he perused the ginger Queen's still open letters which yet required Arendelle's Royal Seal of approval.

"If they're gods too, how come I don't see them depicted at all in church in the pictorial images, icon statues or stained-glass windows? Besides, isn't 'Phil' a funny name for a Greek god? It sounds more like some 14th-century English Prince's moniker to me. Not important or holy sounding enough to be Godly." After learning to read about a year ago, the curious snowman had gobbled up the information of nearly a third of the references book in Arendelle's Royal Library he could get Johanne or Gerda to reach for him on the shelf.

Apparently Olaf had bookmarked the Encyclopaedia Britannica with some brochure literature from the traveling European salesman tour guides who had come on that recent boat into the port.

"It's probably the short nickname for something like Philosthenes or something like that." A tired eyed Anna looks up from her massive stack of papers that she never imagined she would be saddled with. The not trained to be studious young woman had been so absorbed in signing and responding to each one that her answer to her snow friend's query came several minutes later.

"And Olaf, when you read in the encyclopedia or any other material that Hercules or Perseus or any of those other guys were 'gods', they're not really anything to do with our Christian faith in one holy and Almighty God who created the heavens and the earth, and animals and people and everything you see around us. Look it up in that encyclopedia again, Olaf. The term 'god' is in lowercase, right? That means they aren't true deities but merely stories and myths. Folks at the time were just confused because some of those regular, no doubt heroic, normal people had been blessed with powers and gifts that a lot of writers made up and exaggerated some imaginative fiction, that's all." Her mind scattered in a thousand places at once, Anna wanted to clarify this vital point at least for her friend's sponge-like brain the difference between false gods and the one true God, the Father of Truth and Light and Love that they worshipped.

Sometimes I miss Olaf before he could read.

Inquisitive Olaf had been prattling on and on about his latest interest in this Greek portion of the reference book that he had been reading. The older, if not yet wiser, snowman still had a hard time distinguishing between real facts documented throughout humanity's timeline and imaginary tales of creative writing passed down through the ages.

"Ah! I see… Magical gifts like Elsa has! But she's not a goddess… Is she? One of those immortals who turn into constellations when they join the stars for eternity? Is that why she's hiding way in the north in that Fortress of Solitude? But our Elsa's a normal girl like you, right?" The recently impressed by Greek tragedy, inquisitive snowman bites his sniffly lip and rocks back-and-forth on his wobbly snowball pins in front of the young ginger haired woman.

Now Olaf's nonstop chatter of facts and knowledge and hungrily soaked up stories that he had been voraciously devouring catches Anna's divided attention.

"Yes, Olaf. Elsa has been gifted from God with so much magic. But she's not a goddess. Nor is she in hiding. She's just my warmhearted, wonderful, sweet and kind big sister who has so many responsibilities now that it keeps her away from home a lot. And I too do miss having her around so much talk to and help me explain to you all this learning that she would be so much better at. Because Elsa is so much better at all of this than harebrained little me!" Still at times overwhelmed by the enormity of her duty, the young female fights back tears of fond remembrance of the good old days when her sister was in charge as rightful Queen of Arendelle.

It was not so very long ago that Elsa was Queen here and Anna had peeked in watching her meticulous sister sitting in this very chair, diligently using the kinda-hard-to-get-the-knack of Royal seal on her documents and letters of national import like a pro.

"Elsa was so good at getting the wax just hot and melty enough to make a proper crocus seal. All mine just look like mangled, lopsided chocolate kisses, or something even worse. And the ones running off the envelope edges look like blood dripping down. Pretty yucky." Imaginative Anna's frazzled face makes a deep frown that not at all matched her fancy dress and bun hairdo which she starts pulling out at how poorly her royal seals' appearance must give the impression of disorganized chaos to Arendelle's neighboring trade partners.

The hot wax just doesn't like me!

"Ouchy!" Anna lets out a squeak at her well-scorched fingertip pain when her quick digits recklessly tried to snatch up some of the runny purple wax before it drips down onto Papa's mahogany antique desk.

"Oh, poor Anna! Let me help on the next seal! I bet I'd be an expert at melting wax at just the right liquefaction point temperature…" Pleasantly scientific Olaf helpfully offers, but Anna trusted her none too steady-handed little friend made of malleable snow, flammable wood and caustic coal even less than herself with holding the hot wax over a flickering candle flame.

"No, Olaf! I'll do it. It's my job now. I'm not gonna complain. I just gotta get the hang of it… Someday." With a wipe of her sweaty brow that musses her flustered updo, Anna sighs in failure at the really messed up final document as she guiltily affixes a crooked Arendelle seal upon it.

"Of course, this is probably the least crooked one of the bunch of all thirty-three that I've signed and sealed today! So I'm improving, right?" With a critical eye on her haphazard pile of papers with a scrunched up nose, Anna tosses them all onto Kai's east wing desk in the corner of the room for him to check and sort through in the morning.

Anna buries her face in her hands with one more deep sigh. She still always tried to see things on the sunny thing side of life, but all this castle duty, imperative matters of state and nerve-racking solemn political meetings day in and day out for these nine months had worn down the once spirited girl's optimism more than she cared to admit.

"Has it really been nine months?! That's worse than having a baby!" Not aware that Olaf was on her quick heels out the side patio door, Anna loudly declares to the wide-open sky in total frustration. She felt about to pop if she didn't stop to rush out to feel this Summer's never-ending sun on her too long cooped up face which longed to be outside and seize the day.

Her eyes closed, Anna surreptitiously – as the energetic young girl tried to keep this secret rendezvous with herself at least once a week – clambers down the white flowered trellis to take at least one good sprint down the path around the garden to unleash her dutiful tension.

But what the young queen often didn't take into account was set her restricting clothing, the hair pins that left her a little headachy causing her hair bun to get caught on one set of crisscrossing wooden trim lattices of the trellis.

"Oof! I could use a little help here. Olaf! Could you carefully walk over on that little gable and unhook my hairpins from the trellis slats? Ouchy. how I wish for my free wheeling braids again!" Anna calls up to Olaf who was sitting on the nearby midsection roof, merrily whistling with the birdies as he waved his legs about.

He had been patiently waiting there for his slower paced human pal to sneak her way down to the garden grounds before he easily rolled along the sloping roof in a disassembled snowmound of body part pieces.

"You ever ponder if I'm going to graduate to a grown-up, mature snowman because you're going to be an all mature married woman, Anna? I've stayed up nights worrying if I had learned enough about what they call the 'facts of life' to go through the transformation of maturity. I have read that wedded ladies leave their old families behind to 'cleave' to their new husbands with a new family of their own. But doesn't 'cleave' mean to hack up something with a knife? Ooh, married life sounds grisly." A terrified look crosses Olaf's unhappy face to an unbeknownst Anna as he unwillingly considers these wholly unwanted thoughts.

"Anyways…is that's what's going to happen to us, Anna? Are you going to leave our family behind now, too? Like Elsa did? Elsa didn't even get married. She just upgraded her mystical powers to 'Snow Queen' and joined a new kingdom with magic water horses and fire lizards and gigantic rock spirits. Can't blame her for forgetting her favorite snowman who can't do anything more magical than split apart and roll off roofs. I don't even get invitations to go for a visit to that Enchanted Forest place. Now I know how Woody and Puff felt when their kids grew up and went away." With this newfound maturity, Olaf also went through some glum moments of reflective honest feelings in a way.

"Oh Olaf! I'm soo sorry for being too busy to pay proper attention to your feelings! All this time, I had no idea you felt that way, too! Why didn't you tell me about your worries?" As she was painfully hanging onto the trellis lattice for dear life, Anna starts to empathize with the upset frowning snowman, reaching out to give him a much-needed warm hug.

"Indubitably I will endeavor to be more matur—Oh-oh-Anna! Oh no, I'm really losing you!" As he was distractedly speaking in his attempt to be sophisticated ways while undoing Anna's tangled, queenly-done-up, off balanced hairpins, Olaf goes tail over teakettle off the two-story high trellis.

_**SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!**_

The gravity of Olaf's branchy arms, snagged in Anna's wild hair mass, grabs on and knocks the teetering young woman over the precarious edge of the roof as well –

"Gotcha, Baby!"

The topsy-turvy Queen of Arendelle peaks through her upturned skirts and strewn ginger hair strands to discover that she had been caught safely in the strong arms of the hunky young man she was so madly in love with that she was going to marry him in a couple of days.

That, of course, depended if a certain someone precious would make herself available…

"ELSA! You're home!" Anna, the coronated regal Queen of maturing years of three and twenty or not, never grew out of being the excited little sister to her beloved elder sibling whenever Elsa returned to their home for a visit.

The two young women had shared so much pain and heartache, friendship and responsibility, and utmost of all, love that the bond between Elsa and Anna Bernadotte was unshakable. The sisters' close relationship was well renowned throughout this country as both had played instrumental parts in maintaining the peace and tranquility thereof in their Royal parents' untimely absence.

"Of course I wouldn't miss your wedding for anything the world, Anna! There's no one and nothing more important to me than you, remember?" Elsa stretches out her arms that had been rather full in ensuring that she and Kristoff would make it on a quick sled ice slide beneath the roof just in the nick of time to rescue her clumsy little sister and snow friend.

Without a second thought as to his feelings, Anna leaps straight up from Kristoff's ditched arms to go racing right into Elsa's waiting embrace.

That's cool. My love still isn't fragile, Feistypants.

Fortunately constant in matters of their undeniable love, the young Ice Harvester did not mind his fiancée treating him like second fiddle whenever her precious big sister appeared on the scene.

In fact, Kristoff Bjorgman's big soft heart would play an entire symphony on that backup violin all day and all night if it could make his precious Anna be herself and vibrantly happy again.

He understood Anna enough by now to plainly see that his Princess was not complete in this new duty she had to tackle all by herself in these dark months without her sister.

The bighearted blond boy understood and loved his feisty pants so much that any jealousy for her attention was never an issue. Kristoff loved Anna too much for that green eyed nonsense to ever interfere in their harmonious relationship.

"Really, truly?" Teary-eyed Anna sniffles into Elsa's blonde mane that had reverted to its single side braid her little sister adored. Then she emotionally looks up to Elsa with her big, wet, turquoise orbs glimmering full of hopeful love.

"Really, truly." The platinum blonde responds, her warm heart sensing how much it meant for Anna to share in this physical hug with her best friend and only family member close by.

And you know what? It meant that much to Elsa too, as the Ice Queen feels her stiff anxieties which had grown quite jaded in dealing with the tedious duties of doing nothing, day after day, almost totally melt away in her loving little sister's needy embrace.

"You look different than last I saw you, Elsa. A good different, you know what I mean. Way beautifuller, too. It's good to see you wearing your stunning Ice Queen blue dress and heels again, Elsa. They suit you so much better." Anna admits honestly, not realizing it wasn't very tactful a way to address another woman's clothing style. But they were sisters.

"I mean – you still looked stunning in that Snow Queen getup! Maybe even more stunning-er! But I never saw open toe sandals as your style. Like all this regalia and hair done up in this fancy bun isn't really mine, either." Tripping over her own words, Anna tries to cover up her uncouth faux pas about Elsa. She gestures to herself in the once again half ripped and shredded dark teal Queenly attire that poor Johanne has had to repair on countless occasions thus far.

"What you think, Kristoff? Do you prefer Anna in an elegant chignon or in her adorable braids?" Elsa ventures to ask the young mountain man who looked somewhat out of place in his more formal looking Prince consort jacket that snobbish Kai had rushed out and hurriedly forced road-dust-covered Kristoff into.

Even dirt-covered mountainmen must dress in their finest in the presence of two Royal Queens of Arendelle.

"I think Anna always is perfect as Anna." He answers simply and safely while struggling with Kai who had shooed the tall blond into the cloak room to get changed for this impromptu Royal luncheon.

"So eloquent, isn't he?" Grateful for his constant support in all her choices, a teasing Anna ruffles Kristoff's mildly slicked back hair before he makes a beeline retreat to the sideline buffet table where Sven was chewing on some fresh cut cud.

"I suppose you never excelled at pretending to be a picture of sophisticated royal grace, Anna, as I was never raised to be a rugged, untamed outdoorswoman. But this is what duty to our nation has dealt us." With a chuckle at her former royal advisor and Father's old friend literally using the feather duster on Anna's suitor, Elsa responds to her sister's frustrated face with her more resigned air of maturity.

"'Lemonade out of lemons'?" Anna recalls some of their Mama's down to earth wisdom. She poses the fruity question to her adored best buddy of a sis who instantly understood all the unspoken complaints. Anna offers to Elsa one of her special summer lemonade jubilee 'cocktails'– lemonade with maraschino cherries stirred, not shaken, swimming at the glass' base – which was waiting for the two of them on the outdoor table that fastidious Gerda had ordered for the Royal pair.

"How about a lemon jubilee slushie instead?" Elsa easily conjures up some ice out of the air moisture molecules to one of Anna's favorite summer desserts.

"That's EPIC, Elsa! You mix the best drinks EVER!" Taking a long sip of the cherrylicious cool drink, Anna giggles to her just as pleased sister in carefree glee like a smiling Kristoff hadn't heard her in many months' time.

That's more like my girl.

The pair of queens take their seats at the dainty little table in the scenic garden where the servants had scurried to put up for their balcony-hopping, 'runaway' Queen and her favorite royal visitor.

"Hello there, funny large donkey with the big wet nose! I'm Olaf, and I love warm hugs!" From the other side of Arendelle's side garden, at the far end of the trellis, pieces of the discombobulated Olaf strangely come back to consciousness.

Wagging his tail, Sven trots up and nudges the snowman's previously speechless and motionless parts with the reindeer's summertime rutted antlers as Kristoff ambles up to the pair.

"Wow! You really must've taken a bad bump to the old noggin, Olaf! Don't you even remember your old pal, Sven?" Kristoff confuses the obviously addled snowman even further as he throws his voice in a switch just in sync with Sven's facial motions and head nodding intonation.

"Of course I recognize Sven! He's the reindeer who tries to chew on my carrot all the time… So, who's the big donkey in the rumpled vest with the funky slicked back hair talking to Anna, Sven?" Olaf says from the corner of his crooked mouth to the grey furred Rangifer after Kristoff effortlessly plops the magical snowperson's three dizzy mounds back together in the proper order.

"Okay, try to focus here…Anna! Elsa's home! Let's go and play in the snow!" Olaf yells out gleefully.

"What's up with Olaf, Kristly?" Anna asks dubiously as she gazes down, incredulous at her 'learned' snowman friend who goes back to cooing at Sven's squishy muzzle cheeks a few seconds before throwing his arms around Elsa's shimmering legs.

"Dunno. I think that hard fall from the third floor roof must have joggled his brains back to factory reset or something." The tall mountain man looks from where Olaf – instead of spouting some wise connotation or another ponderous query as he was wont to do of late – had reverted to his less than brilliant, dense snow pea brain act again.

"Or maybe Olaf is just smart enough to realize, before even I did, that learning more about the world and growing up with new responsibilities doesn't necessarily mean you have to grow apart from your true self or the important friends you cherished before. Keeping both elements of your life alive will somehow be possible, because I know in my heart that some things are too precious and should never be let go of. Like family and love and the unchangeable feeling of togetherness God blessed us with." Frankly sagacious, Elsa's answer covers all the bases as she includes the forever bond of their beloved snowman in the sisterly equation as her cryokinetic magic pulls Olaf into an embrace with her sister.

"I could never forget how much you mean to me, Olaf. I'm sorry if my striking out into the unknown, searching outside for answers that were right here in front of me all the while, confused you, too. Just please know, I love you, Olaf." Elsa's mind's eye had come to peace in reminiscing of that fateful night some seventeen years ago as she now repeats little toddler Anna's unreserved, loving response to her big sister's first creation.

That noseless little snowman had become not only their lifelong Christmas tradition, but Elsa and Anna's undying tradition of sisterly love as well.

"Really, truly?" Olaf blinks up at his beautiful friend with his most innocent query.

"Really, truly." Elsa reiterates, definitively kneeling down to hug away the snowman's unspoken sadness and feelings of betrayal he had kept bottled up inside.

Olaf had taken it hard being discarded like an old toy when his 'kid' had gone off to different adventurers with bigger, 'shinier' friends who each possessed magic powers of their own in the Enchanted Forest, like Nokk and Bruni.

"So I'm unforgettable, like the feel of your hand in mine?" Olaf contentedly croons the well delivered phrase in tune as he takes firm hold of Elsa's very human hand into his grateful branchy one.

"In every way, Olaf. I'll never forget you ever, I promise, and I will do my utmost to never let you feel left behind again." Elsa pledges to the joyously clapping snow creature whose slight case of mental breakdown amnesia is washed away by Elsa's reassuring cooling touch and words of love.

And it was icing on his ice cream cake when she follows up with a snowflake kiss to Olaf's grinning, pleased cheek.

"Does that mean you can stay for the whole week, Elsa? YEAH! We've got an entire wedding to plan! I've put it all on hold because I wanted you to not only be here for the ceremony, but also help me plan everything about it. That's what sisters are for, right? I didn't really know where to start without you!" Anna did not want to alarm Elsa, but she had always imagined it would be her responsible, creative big sister sorting out all the wedding details for her.

"Yes! Yes that's right, Anna! You and I have a perfect wedding day to set into motion. Doesn't matter what strings I have to pull – I am their all-important Fifth Element and Snow Queen, after all – so I will stay for as long as you need me too, little sister. I want you to feel free to fully enjoy this most precious time of your life, just as you always dreamed. Like I said before, you're the most important person in the world to me. And nothing can hold me back from making this wedding plan attack unforgettable for you!" With a vigor and excitement she had not felt of late from deep inside, Elsa grabs hold of Anna's hands in hers as the two go spinning out from the courtyard, through the gates and into the Arendelle Main Street Square.

Holding on tight to one another with that certain feeling of hand-in-hand sisterly love unchanging, Elsa makes a declaration to herself as much as to her sister.

"See this snow globe? I believe it was supernaturally created to give me the ability to have dual watch over Arendelle as well as the Enchanted Forest and the elemental spirits there, for whatever time you need to feel free to be a young bride, Anna." In an ethereal glisten of the summer evening mists gathering at her fingertips' beckon, Elsa conjures her special link to the spirit world of the North.

The more powerful than ever before Ice Queen displays that magical snow globe her tears had created within the mystical glacial Fortress of Solitude in Ahtohallan.

"Wow. Pretty." Anna was always fascinated by her sister's snow magic as she leans in to view the snow globe's scenic tableau of the peaceful Enchanted Forest scenes floating in the lands where autumn never ended.

There was Bruni on his best behavior, tiptoeing at the edge of the river, only causing the Nokk to let off a little steam with his fiery hijinx. The Northuldra people who had stayed behind helping keep nature in balance there with their wise old leader Yelana, were meditating, despite the fact that the Rock giants were amusing themselves with their favorite game of tree stomping nearby.

Earlier last week Elsa had a hard time negotiating with the massive, rigid stone creatures that the elimination of only certain overgrown trees in the forest would be suitable. That hard-fought negotiation would result in more than enough firewood for the native people as cooler weather in that far northern location would soon be setting in.

They stubbornly didn't at first agree. Not until the Northuldra promised not to encroach on a certain section of rocky habitat did the immovable stone giants finally comply.

"For the time being, I will be able to stay and serve the people of our home once again as Queen of Arendelle, while you and your Kristoff are off on that bridal tour across Norway I sensed from your many letters that you have been looking so forward to. And I don't want either of you to worry about a single thing back here at home in the Castle while you're gone, Anna. I've got your back this time, little sister, just as you always uncomplainingly have had mine. This is to be your moment, Anna, as I proudly stand witness at your side for the happy marriage you deserve more than anyone. I never did get the chance to tell how much I appreciate all you've taken on in my place here, after I had to suddenly leave you and Arendelle behind." Elsa speaks in her softest tone, gently smoothing out with cool waves of the breeze the worry lines and early wrinkles of anxiety that were starting to take root on her pure-hearted baby sister's overtaxed face.

"Not just any witness, Elsa. My Maid of Honor, right?" Anna declares, with hope springing to life across her perked up features. She gratefully hugs her sibling whom she felt handed her the world with this opportunity to be free of all her exhausting palace duties as reigning Queen.

Then the beaming young woman takes the tiara diadem that had been weighing heavy on her ginger head, to place it upon the more fitting crown of Elsa's platinum one.

The two young women stare deep into one another's eyes with the easy transfer of power as they were waltzing hand-in-hand in town that was starting to bustle with Arendellians welcoming Queen Elsa home and expressing their excitement for Queen Anna's wedding.

"The Queen of honor." Captain Destin Mattias had been quietly observing the sisters interaction as he had sensed the North wind blowing in with Agnarr's amazing eldest daughter arriving in the near vicinity.

The tall, dark, older man bows his salt-and-pepper curly head in reverent salute to the rightful Queen of Arendelle. The wise old Captain of the Guard of Arendelle had been wondering just how long it would take before the gifted platinum blonde royal daughter – who had selflessly united her kingdom with the native Northuldra and the spirit elements who protected the Enchanted Forest as well – would realize that her true place was not to rule alone in the cold throne of lonely isolation the mystical North offered.

But rather, here was Elsa's place, her home, with people she loved right at her side, to give the girl susceptible to a cold heart in the past, all the warmth of their love right back.

The Arendelle sisters pause to stand before the intricately done, bronze statues of young Northuldra girl Iduna standing proud and sure beside the teenage Prince of Arendelle, Agnarr, with the winds of change swirling all around.

* * *

Noticing the two royal young ladies standing before their parents homage in Main Square, it pained former Lieutenant Mattias all over again to have left his dear friend Agnarr's older child up in the lonely Enchanted Forest.

That magical place already had swallowed the majority of his life and that of many of his comrades as well, trapped in the midst of its mists for nearly thirty-five years.

And though the secretive, elemental circumstances had been altered by this amazing pair of royal descendants, now Queen Elsa was the enchantment's unfortunate, yet willing, captive.

But what good would it have done to give his personal opinion on matters that only time and tide and experience could teach such a headstrong young woman, who believed she was doing the right thing for her entire nation?

As a dutiful Royal guard of the house of Bernadotte, Mattias had not forgotten he was sworn to obey his ruler's command, no matter how he differed. And though King Runeard had proven to be unworthy of Mattias' loyalty in the end, nonetheless his one and only son and heir with a good soul, Prince Agnarr indubitably had it.

Lieutenant Mattias had formed a close friendly bond with the lonely child during the introverted boy's sheltered youth that was far too inhibited by his cruel kingly father, once the eager new recruit was assigned to care for the Arendelle Prince as personal guard.

The courageous soldier became more of the much needed father figure to the Crown Prince than a mere guard, and was protecting his charge on that final journey that kept the loyal guard in the dark within the mists and separated the close friends forever, it seemed.

Mattias never saw Agnarr be crowned as King. But now having read up about the young monarch's record as a fine Naval officer and fair and peaceful ruler of his nation, unlike his predecessor, beloved by all of his people, the older man was gladdened to know his lost friend had become a noble King to his country during his reign.

Yes, his reclusive tendency to close the gates when little Elsa could not control her growing ice magic was a little extreme. But her young father too had been fortified behind the castle walls to safeguard the monarchy for all of his sheltered life. Mattias was surprised to discover Arendelle Castle's gates were ever open to the public at all.

_That Northuldra princess must have been a very special, free spirited influence to move you, my Prince…_

Now, all old Mattias could do for Agnarr was to watch over his brave younger daughter as she ruled Arendelle in peace with the Northuldra and the spirits. And Mattias would hope and pray that the older special child of Arendelle and Northuldra, gifted with her mother's connection to nature, as well as some inexplicable magic of ice and snow likened to that of the Snow Queen of legend, would learn as much about herself alone in the Enchanted Forest as she could.

And then Elsa must come home back to Arendelle to live her extraordinary dream out of hiding for all the world to see.

Here the faithful old soldier could keep close eye on both his good friend's children for the rest of the days the Good Lord granted him.

For what use was it that Elsa and Anna of Arendelle together were the bridge between two worlds, if the close sisters were censored and sentenced to spend the majority of their so integral lives apart by some cruel hand of fate?

Gazing upon the momentous bronze statues of his Prince as the boy he so fondly remembered and considered more the son he never had, as well as the brave young native woman who changed destiny with her generosity and eventual love, Mattias lets out a little sigh.

He was raised too religious a man – his own father serving as both fine soldier and goodly Chaplain in the Arendelle Army barracks – to buy that the Lord God would deem to do that for these two precious girls who had already lived through so much isolated sorrow.

Elsa and Anna's only crime was to have boundless hope for their country, true faith in the people in it, and a selfless devotion of love for each other that surpassed all earthly comprehension.

_Sounds like the perfect love you prescribed in the Good Book to me, Lord. So I know You'll reward them in the end._

_Heck, if you deemed to give some slack to this jaded old man by setting him free and return him to find a good woman like my Halima, so constant and patient waiting for him all these decades later, you can work miracles for Agnarr's utterly good little gals. Please help them both be happy._

The tall, dark and still handsome, lifelong guardsman strokes his salt-and-pepper moustache in this prayerful self reflection. He catches sight of his now wife, Halima Mattias, standng in their bakery window.

_Hey, after being gypped out of having a woman's touch in his life for thirty-plus years, no self-respecting guy would want to wait a single second more, right? Especially having a lovely apple dumpling like my Halima at home._

The now General of Arendelle's Armed Forces strides across the Arendelle main street from the Palace courtyard where he had made a special delivery. The town's finest baker, his Halima, had been sent word late this evening by Queen Anna to bring out another batch of not only their regular box of gingerbread cookies, but also some other baked goods for her to 'test' what a proper wedding reception snack should look like.

Had no idea her big sister would grace us with her presence today. We just imagined that Queen Anna just woke up a hungry sweets monster like her Dad was.

"You think I'll ever discover a lifelong soulmate, like Anna and Elsa's Papa and Mama. Or Anna and Kristoff now, or like you and Mrs. Halima have ascertained, General Mattias? Sometimes being the one-of-a-kind specimen as I was created to be distinctively unique by Elsa, I feel so dreadfully alone the world…" His rattled brains settled again, Olaf speaks with a sigh resigned to his fate as he waddles up alongside the dark skinned man on the clear summer Midnight Sun early evening.

Using as many 'big words' as he could apply in one sentence, Olaf often found that his exploration of thought-provoking literature caused the mild-mannered snowman to ponder the deeper meaning of life.

Especially now that his friend Anna was about to take the next big step called 'Marriage' and send his world all topsy-turvy with change again.

Though Elsa had reassured him of his place in her heart, Olaf couldn't help but let out a sniffle at his forever solitary notion.

"Don't you worry, little snow friend. If nothing else, this crazy life has taught me that there are more things under the sun than we could ever comprehend. If there's someone special out there for you, Olaf, you'll find her. Because the Lord made every living thing to walk this earth two by two. So, if she's out there, she'll be looking for a unique, one-of-a-kind snow guy like you too, you can be sure of it." Mattias had spent enough time with the sage old woman Yelana - and now was learning to be upbeat from his unsinkable Halima - to not have both of those far more sagacious women rub off on him a little for him to spout a few anecdotes of wisdom every now and then.

"Really? You actually think so, General Mattias? Oh! I believe I'll place an advertisement in the newspaper – perhaps front page so that a one-of-a-kind snowgirl I never met will unquestionably know that I'm here! This is far more exhilarating than studying the entire 'H' edition of the Encyclopedia I had scheduled for over the summer vacation!" Olaf's charcoal eyes sparkle as he blissfully sways back-and-forth, the dark cloud of depression quickly evaporating from his permafrosty brow.

* * *

"Oh, poor Olaf. I think all this celebrating and talking weddings gets him a little bummed." Anna murmurs behind her hand to Elsa, half listening in to General Mattias and Olaf's serious conversation while the sisters were sampling some of Halima's delicious baked gingerbread scones.

"Then how about you and I together make our favorite friend a special wedding present to cheer him up, Anna? One that will remind him how unforgettable he is every day." Empathetic Elsa entices her intrigued sibling by gliding over to the little bakery off the square's Main Street where their mother often brought the two girls when they were tiny things.

"Anna! Oh! That's what this sugar rush was all about! You're home for a visit at last, Elsa! You two girls get in here out from that summer heat and have some cool milk and fresh baked cookies! Gingerbread dark chocolate chip! Your favorites combined!" The kind gregarious woman had always generously showered her tasty treats upon the pair of adorable little princesses whenever Queen Iduna had brought them into town square before the gates were closed.

Halima né Kranse had been the Arendelle Royal Baker for years, having secretly snuck precocious young Prince Agnarr her famed gingerbread cookies into the gloomy Royal Castle of seclusion via the new Guardsman Mattias when she was very young.

The perky young baker girl persisted, even when her 'Sugar' Prince Agnarr's father – the strict, mercurius and definitely prejudiced King Runeard – looked down on his only son as being a weakling for having a sweet tooth and associating with such local rabble.

It was through this clandestine delivery of forbidden, tasty gingersnaps that Mattias could credit his relationship with his long-suffering sweetheart Halima.

The pretty, dark skinned, surprisingly slim for she baked so well, sweet cook was adept at all things sugary and sweet. And years ago, Halima, with brash young guardsman Mattias' stealthy assistance, had started to faithfully bake her special cookies for the sheltered, motherless, held back Royal Crown Prince.

Lieutenant Mattias clandestinely delivered a bakers dozen of sweet treats to the introverted young prince week after week, for years under his domineering father's stuck-up kingly nose.

The events that happened in the far, far North caused the demise of the ungenerous old King almost thirty-five years ago.

Then, Runeard had only permitted the Prince and the boy's personal guard to come and meet the Northuldra because it played into the ruthless monarch's hand extended in supposed friendship in the Enchanted Forest.

But that underhanded subterfuge resulted in King Runeard's death and teenage Agnarr's early ascension to the throne.

Halima was brokenhearted that though her dear friend, her 'Sugar Prince' Agnarr, had returned, his personal guard – dare say, her fiancé and beau – Mattias, had been lost.

Somehow behind the veil of the northern mists, none of the guardsmen, nor Royal entourage were thought to live to tell the tale about what occurred.

From that entourage of Royal advisors, guards and soldiers, whom the King full of trickery had convinced were all going North to sign a routine peace treaty, only Prince Agnarr had been returned to Arendelle in one piece.

By some miraculous propitious wind involving a very special young girl, only the heir to the throne was recovered that day.

Although his memory was fuzzy, at best as to what precisely happened, save for the fact that he saw his father fall from that northern cliff to his death during a fierce skirmish with the Northuldra.

Soon upon his re-arrival in Arendelle, Prince Agnarr was declared King of Arendelle.

The motherless, and now fatherless, Royal Prince was blessed by good fortune to have his lifelong tutor and appointed Regent, Councilor Kai Rosenvalen, now at his side. Growing up with his own issues, Agnarr was glad Kai was present in the background of his youth to play the boy's better conscience in stark contrast to the cruel father who truly cared nothing for his people.

Nor his son really.

His only interest in the secretly despised young boy had been to control and continue his ancestral dynasty's name.

The highly educated, young councilmember had volunteered to take on the assignment to be precocious Prince Agnarr's special tutor from a young age when the emotionally trodden down, sickly Queen Margherita of Arendelle asked her friendly washerwoman named Gerda to find a kind instructor for her son.

She knew her husband, Agnarr's father, was callous and unconcerned for his troublesome son, so the weak Queen wished for her dear boy to be especially cared for in her eventual demise.

Since the beginning of the lonely Crown Prince's sheltered youth, Kai had promised Queen 'Rita' to always be there for the young Prince to lean on. Kai and his perky young wife Gerda did their best to teach young Agnarr the true goodness in life, and not merely the harsh drilling of King Runeard's ruthless example of rule.

And when Agnarr was abruptly thrown onto the throne at a youthful age, Councilor Kai was there to be the steady hand to help implement all the responsibilities that were suddenly required of the special young lad to lead his nation.

But teenaged King Agnarr was determined to lead his nation much differently than his father. His kingdom would be one of true peace and patriotism. Proven heroic in his own right in the Sjoforsvaret Norwegian Navy, the young man who would be Admiral held a loyalty and love for all people throughout all the country, even the cold North he was, unbeknownst, so vital a part of.

As for the young baker woman the loyal guardsmen left behind, ever optimistic, sweet Halima never stopped believing her Mattias would come home some day. She never gave up on being faithful to her one true love, though he was presumed dead.

Even if he never returned, even if it took all the years of the prime of her life, Halima would remain constant to his memory that no one could ever take the place of – though there were many offers and broken hearts along the years –the only man she ever loved.

And besides, something inside, something on the wind every night as she prayed for her love, told stubborn Halima Kranse that her Mattias still lived.

As she still believed, she still delivered that bakers dozen of gingerbread cookies herself now to the much more kindly disposed towards all his people, unprejudiced King Agnarr every week he spent in the Castle.

That is, until the cool eyed, handsome Royal ruler and Naval officer brought home a new wife – an exotic eyed Princess of Sweden – and they were blessed with a pair of children who appreciated her gingerbread sweet treats every bit as much as their Sugar Prince of a Papa did.

Then generous Halima squeezed as many gingerbread men as the overstuffed bakery box could hold.

Even when the castle gates were inexplicably closed, Halima still brought the heavy box of cookies, rain or shine, snow or sun, to push through the rear fence post where she and Mattias had rendezvoused with their secret sweet mission decades before.

Halima's unwavering belief, good faith and constancy through the countless, empty years were rewarded when her man – albeit thirty-four years of age had passed, though through the eyes of love it was naught but a season – had knocked on the bakery door.

And he was no less asking, hat in hand, if she had ready that bakers dozen of sweet handmade confections for their friends at Arendelle Castle.

* * *

_"Lieutenant Destin Mattias, at your service, Madame. With 34 years worth of almost 1800 Saturdays of back payments requisite in exchange for your weekly hand delivered fresh gingerbread bakers dozen, sweet bakery lady." Mattias had barely been able to utter then, holding back his own tears as Halima's jubilantly shocked ones overflowed with choked up tears._

* * *

"I'm home for more than that, Halima." Elsa's high-pitched words call the sweet old baker woman back from her tender reminisces of her reunion with her fellow, just nine months ago.

The young queen smiles broadly, gladly squeezing Halima's eternally flour dusted hands in hers.

"I'm sure you'll be conjuring up some magnificent confections and sweet culinary delights for Anna's wedding at the castle in a few days." Elsa begins to speak when the dark lady's eyes light up like a Christmas tree.

"Then the wedding is definitely a go, Little Anna?" Halima reaches for and squeezes Anna's now thoroughly flour dusted hands in hers.

"Thanks to the old/new Queen, who's going to stick around in Arendelle while Kristly and I have a real chance at freedom for a bridal tour across the country – no responsibility strings attached, at last!" Anna dances a little jig that confidante Halima joins in, both dragging Elsa around for a jaunty spin on the bakery floor.

"That's wonderful! Anna's been an amazing inspiration and friend to all we citizens, Queen Elsa. But our free-spirited little princess serving as a Regal Queen? She'll be bouncing off the Castle walls the rest of her days if I know her Papa's little Gingersnap! It's almost as bad as when that sailor boy child had you two poor little lambs cooped up in that big ole' castle all them years! I guess my Sugar Prince Agnarr really needed Mattias around to steer him right by way of good advice, instead of that other individual." Opinionated and unrestrained, Halima seem to have a bee in her bonnet about a certain Royal advisor who steered King Agnarr to shut in his entire young family and become recluses at the slightest sign of supernatural trouble.

"Ahem. Stuck-up. Cough cough. Minister. Cough cough. Kai." A laughing Halima responds, wiping her hands on her apron after punishing some dough with several extra pounds in the properly pompous Councilmember's honor.

Just then she notes the elder sister's quiet introspection.

"What's wrong, Elsa dear? Anything old Auntie Halima can help make right for you? It's not something a cookie can't fix, is it? A matter of the heart, perhaps? You got man troubles, girl? Here, a sugarcoated gingerbread man always does the trick for that, sweetie." The wise older woman had an easy way of endearing herself to her audience as she smoothly slips the sweet treat into the platinum blonde Queen's hand while inquiring of what was on her obviously engrossed mind.

"Oh, no no no. He hee hee. It's not about me. Or a man, or anything like that, at all." Elsa stumbles over her words of denial, especially when the gingerbread baked good in her hands seems to her to take on the likeness of Prince Hans in some warped way with its red headed frosted cookie form.

"Not a visible one, anyway." Elsa almost inaudibly admits, breaking off the redheaded gingerbread man's disturbing head by accident when Anna in her dessert frenzy pushes past her sister to sneak behind the bakery case and swipe some of the chocolate icing off the cake Halima was just starting to decorate.

"Oops, sorry." Elsa's cringed apology to the cracked neck gingerbread man left the bakery woman perplexed.

"Trust me, Hon. Most men are just as tasty, with or without their heads." Halima saucily gives some experienced veteran female advice, trying to relieve the distressed younger woman. But her spicy words seem to have the opposite effect on Elsa.

"_Right_... Well, back to the subject I wanted to ask you about, if I may, Halima." The distracted platinum blonde carefully puts the broken cookie back together with some 'frosting' of her own magical variety before delicately placing the remastered redhead gingerbread man on the cookie sheet lying on the table before her.

"Go ahead and shoot, Snow Angel, while I finish flouring these pans for the next batch. And that cookie man won't bite if you don't, I promise you, Sweetie." The lighthearted woman giggles at the jumpy blonde monarch's adversity to eating that particular gingerbread man.

"Yes, Halima. I know it's asking a lot, but I was wondering if you had kept in your inventory a certain cake decorating, dress-up outfit from the old days which you used on Anna's favorite birthday cake that you let us play with here in the shop when we were little." Elsa goes out on a limb here, hoping the sentimental bakery woman who had decorated their young lives with her phenomenal sweet treats, had kept some artful supplies from over twenty years ago in her kitchen still.

"It's so funny you should mention that, Elsa! When I was just cleaning up an old trunk we moved from the back room – Mattias kept stubbing his big toe on it - I did happen upon one of those cute little frocks I used to decorate my cakes with. You remember, the one with all the frills and a matching parasol little Anna adored? It was for the one your dear Mama commissioned me to bake for your – no it was Anna's!—I think? – Well, one of you girl's birthday cakes. I made so many for my precious little princesses in those good old days!" Halima stops her kneading of the dough to sit back in her rocking chair to reminisce of those early days of her shop first being dubbed the official Royal bakery of Arendelle.

Those were the happy years when her Sugar Prince had first gotten married to that playful meringue whiff of an adopted Swedish Princess named 'Iduna'. And soon after, precious gumdrops Elsa and Anna popped out of the oven as just wee little things of their young parents pride and joy.

"Oh, it was definitely itty-bitty Anna's third birthday, I remember, because it was summertime and I wondered why on earth you and your Mama Iduna insisted on having a snowman as the cake design. A snowman in summer of all things! I recall baking up three mound cakes for three years in a row!" Halima scoffs at the outlandish memory, she not exactly privy to the family secret involving the ice and snow and real snowmen, as close as she was to her Sugar Prince's adorable family.

"So after I finished the triple round mounds, I baked 'em and frosted 'em with white shredded coconut, licorice lumps and gumdrop sugar cubes for eyes and mouth. Then I thought the poor thing looked so stark naked to attend a Royal birthday, that I should dress it up in that cute little pink frock I had made out of food dyed cheesecloth for one of my award-winning decorated cake scenes I entered in the state fair my first year of baking. Ah, Lordy! Those were the days of my youth gone by." Talkative Helena had a knack for telling stories almost as good as she baked as her hands were nonstop deftly moving across her cooking sheets and wire racks while she spun tales.

The older woman had Elsa intently listening, and by now Anna raptly as well as she was quietly sitting on the counter, contently chewing on all the yummy nutty stock til all the walnut and pecan baskets were empty.

Halima goes to a nearby drawer and carefully pulls out the twenty-year-old pink dyed cheesecloth baby doll sized dress. Out comes its matching cute parasol that she had taken the artistic liberty to decorate little Princess Anna's snowman cake with all those years ago, thusly turning the requested snowman into a snowlady for the snowbuilding obsessed, three-year-old Princess instead.

"I remember that! I REMEMBER THAT! Oh, oh, how I loved my Snowlady cake! You made that, Halima?! I love you even more now! I thought she was so beautiful and magical that she could come to life and sing and dance and drink tea with us! Remember, Elsa?! My favorite birthday cake snowlady!" Anna exudes excitement, tears in her emotive eyes as she presses the nostalgic old dyed pink doll frock to her cheek lovingly, more like an old friend than a food decoration or mere toy.

"Didn't know it meant so much to you, girl. It was soon after that I wasn't asked to bake birthday cakes anymore for either of you princesses. And none of you ever came to my shop no more, so I thought this little lady must've been a disappointing flop, even if I put all my love and care into making her for you two precious babes of my Sugar Prince. You know, I never saw him nor your sweet Mama again, but from afar at church every now and then. Poor lambs lost at sea, what, six years ago now? And it wasn't until years later that you gals came back out of that hermit castle to bring some sparkle into this bakery's humdrum life. But I am proud I kept on delivering your Papa's cookie box every week. I didn't know if either of you even got it, but I suppose it became my tradition as my Sugar Princesses official birthday cake baker." Halima says with a soft smile of sadness and regret that missed the little boy Prince who enjoyed her cooking for over forty years and was nondiscriminatory enough to make the once looked down upon minority baker woman the success she had become today.

"She only meant the world to us both, Halima! I even gave her a name back then! Let me see… It was a combination of our two names because I wanted Elsa and I to share her as our new dolly to play with! I guess I was too little to realize that the more cake we gobbled up, the smaller my snow lady became! Oh well! We tried to keep her full of snowflakes and planned to rebuild her again to stay with us forever. Until Kai and Papa and Mama caught us sneaking her sticky, gooey remnants off the table into the backyard! Oh! This brings back so many good memories, big sisty!" As she fingers the pink parasol, Anna coos over the still vivid recollection of that early birthday surprise that five year old Elsa tried to use her premature snow magic to keep going for her weepy little sister.

"**ELIANA**! That's it! We named her '_Eliana'_!" Anna stops mid-swirl of the parasol to dangerously suddenly shriek out, startling Halima awake from her rocking chair.

"Yes, Anna. That's why I brought you here. Because knowing Halima cherishes keepsakes as much as you do, with your enthusiastic love of snowmen and childlike innocence to believe in miracles, along with a little nudge of my ice magic, maybe you and I can do something special for Olaf for his hurting his feelings. Because when we're together, it's my favorite place to be, Anna. In seeking the truth about myself, I almost forgot that was the most precious truth of all." Elsa was gazing from Anna's elated face, to the memorable lacy frock to the bright pink parasol back and into Anna's loving, lively eyes again.

"I'm sorry I missed your birthday this year, Anna. I promise I will never miss another one of your important dates again. And I hope I can make it up to you and Olaf now with this." Elsa says enigmatically enticing, squeezing Anna's hand tight with a big smile on her lovely face.

"Do the magic! Do the magic!" Anna squeals like a tiny tot all over again as she dances around in place, in sudden anticipation for something miraculously excellent about to happen.

"Okay. So….Anna. Do you want to build a snowlady?" Elsa responds with that certain glint of enjoyment in her stunning blue eyes that frost over momentarily as Anna claps her hands and nods as she breathes in excitedly as was her ecstatic habit.

And in a cloud of flour dust and ice flakes, confectioner's sugar and snow powder combined, another simple, yet miraculous, creation of the Ice Queen begins to take shape.

One mound of snow. Two mounds of snow. Three perfectly formed, oh-so-familiar shaped mound of snow appears on Halima's bakery counter, cryokinetically filling out the frost levitated pink frock.

As Elsa intricately molds two button-up snowboots, delicately heeled, she invites a giggling Anna to affix some candied chocolate chip kisses as the snowwoman's shirt buttons, just as she recalled how her third birthday cake was decorated almost twenty years before.

The Ice Queen, in her element, magically applies the baked sugar lace, Halima had so painstakingly created as a master baker all those years ago, to take flight and spin around the cheesecloth dress frayed hem with its icy sugar lace decor.

After rifling through Halima's larder, Anna comes racing back into the bakery to attach a pair of long cinnamon sticks as the snowwoman's arms and chocolate frosted finger tips.

And upon the three foot tall snowwoman's blank, closed eyes, Elsa attractively applies lashes made of the shoestring black licorice Halima produces.

Then Elsa artistically illustrates some ice lilac lip gloss to a dainty mouth that makes the experienced cake decorator proud of the talented young Queen.

So that only left for the one last, finishing touch –

"Hold on! I've got a carrot in my pocket!"

Halima may have been amused by this outburst, but Anna did not surprise her sister at all with this revelation. Elsa was close enough to her sibling to know the compassionate girl pretty much kept a spare carrot (or two) in her pocket, just in case Sven got a little hungry on one of their outings. Or Kristoff. Either one responded positively to the orange veggie as a snack.

Anna breaks off the long carrot's rooty end to make it a more petite girlish artifice as the crowd of children watching in wonder outside the bakery window erupt in applause for the fantastic cake boss show their Royal family sisters were giving the pleased crowd out for an evening stroll.

_**Spplunk!**_

"Oh! That was so much fun! Just like when we were kids! I love you, Eliana!" Full of joy, Anna claps her hands together as she recalls saying those same words to another faceless snowman many, many years ago.

"And I love you, Elsa. Thank you." Anna says more reflectively, hugging her sister tight.

Both sisters linger in the warm embrace as they stand before the little snow creature they had built together now again.

"I will always love you, Anna. What would I ever do without you?" Elsa unreservedly offers the warmth in her heart that could never go cold again. Not now that the Ice Queen knew love outweighed the balance of the arctic chill within her soul, if she just let the constancy of their sisterly togetherness take hold.

"You'll never have to find out! I'll always be here for you." Anna responds to her dearest friend with all the honest truth of her affectionate heart full of supportive love for Elsa.

And that was where the real magic came in.

Summoning up her cryokinetic energies with a focused mind to give her other beloved, Olaf, an equal companion, a friend for life, a helpmate to walk alongside him all his days, just as every creature on earth was created to exist, two-by-two and side-by-side by their Creator.

The pretty sugar and candy coated snowlady – long ago dubbed 'Eliana' in the half-and-half inseparable shared sisterly moniker – magically sparkles to life through the power of love and sisterly friendship.

Plus more than a nudge of Snow Queen Elsa's ultimate snow magic tapped through the sisterly bond God's generous love granted the special two Arendelle girls.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Comes Eliana's first musical words, borne with the sweet memory of a special party for her precious little Princess in days of yore as her black licorice eyelashes flutter open with new life.

As the small business woman named Halima gasps in surprise at seeing the magical mystery taking place on her humble cake decorating table firsthand, Anna and Elsa clap their hands together and applaud in glee, right along with their audience outdoors, at the birth of their new/old friend.

Just then, the bells over the door jingle to signal a customer entering the bakery.

Halima's heart was caught her mouth for once and how she would explain this strange event on her previously hygienic food decorating table to her customers.

But she needn't have worried.

For it was only her husband Mattias, who had seen so many magical things in the world of ice this kingdom was so intrinsically part of before that he did not even blink an eye anymore.

"Guess who needs another sweet drink of pure cane to get that sugar rush boost out of his newest insecurity?" The tall, dark toned general of the Norwegian Armed Forces speaks with a hint of sarcasm as he opens the door to this bakery establishment.

After all, Mattias lived and worked and paid innumerable sums of orts in exchange for so many gingerbread cookie boxes back payment that he rightly partly owned it, alongside his new wife.

"Olaf?!" Anna and Elsa exchange a panicked look. This was not exactly the right setting for how they were planning the romantic introduction of this now two of a kind pair of snow people.

"Hi, Anna. Hi, Elsa. Kristoff wondered where you two went. Did you guys need a sugary cookie boost too? Our hometown baker Halima makes the best – Huh? Ohhh… Who's that!?" It was love at first sight for Olaf as he leaps up to sit on one of the stool benches that the popular town baker had installed for the short legged childish fans of her sweet treats.

"I'm Eliana. And I like sweet kisses." With that somewhat shocking announcement from a primly dressed little snow lady that had Elsa horrified and Anna chortling, Eliana takes her first sure step.

In her neat little booty high heels no less, she makes a beeline towards a wide eyed, jaw dropped, thunderstruck Olaf.

The pink frilly dressed, exuding confidence from every sparkly molecule snowgirl then hooks her speechless counterpart in by his neck with the curve end of her pink parasol to give Olaf his first big snowy kiss right on his instantly slushy lips.

The shimmering icy lilac gloss that remained on Olaf's stunned mouth was a telltale sign of his utter staggered astonishment.

"May I help you clean up this messy kitchen, Madame Baker? I'm an expert making things neat and prim and tidy!" Ambitiously going right to work as she flutters her eyelids, leaving Olaf in her literal snow dust, Eliana's high pitched voice sings politely as she smiles up to the befuddled Halima.

The older woman takes a step between the apparently romantically aggressive magic snowwoman and her tickled pink chuckling husband Mattias, who breaks out in a belly laugh he hadn't felt in ages. The older pair watch in amazement as the little snowwoman takes control of the little dustpan and broom in her cinnamon stick arms right out from a flabbergasted Halima's hands and starts sweeping the sugar dust up from the bakery floor.

"Isn't she sublime? So this is what romantic love feels like." Olaf sighs blissfully with a silly smile pasted all over his lovestruck face in this new venue for his curiosity now to explore.

"Yup, little snow buddy. You can take it from a happily married man. Once you find the right woman, love just gets better and better from here on in." General Mattias shares a wry smile with his wife playfully, giving her tight bottom underneath that flour dusty apron a mischievous pinch as the still madly in love couple chuckle sweet nothings in one another's ears.

They felt so rewarded with this second chance at true abiding love at last that the older pair ignored their growing audience all around.

"Sounds good to me." With a crooked smirk, Kristoff had wandered into Anna's favorite haunt of a bakery in search of everyone, just in time to hear the older man's praise of the satisfying role of being a husband. Especially since he was on the track to become one himself, very soon. Kristoff blatantly agrees with the old soldier on such taboo, private matters in their conservatively Victorian day and age.

But Anna was a love warrior/fearless bride-to-be enough not to be at all flustered by her fella's roving eye fallen upon her, as he was obviously imagining some of what the older gentleman was insinuating.

In her enthusiasm of meeting Kristoff's hungry gaze with one of her own, Anna grabs up the nearest gingerbread cookie – the redheaded one Elsa had carefully repaired after a regrettable breakage – and chomps his head right off, chewing it luxuriously.

"Yum Yum."

"Oh, oops! Was that your cookie, Elsa? You made it especially tasty with those iced sugar crystals!" As she hears Elsa's gasp, the ginger haired young woman had no idea how she was sending her older sister into a tizzy, as she extends the remainder of the gingerbread man's headless cookie to the platinum blonde.

"No, you may…enjoy…all of it, Anna. Some of us are watching our waistlines if we are to be presentable to stand before all of Arendelle for a special wedding ceremony in a few days time." Elsa chuckles, trying to eradicate the inclination of thinking that gingerbread cookie Anna was happily devouring and crunching away at was in any way associated with a Prince from their past named 'Hans Westergaard'.

_Wherever you may be right now, I wish you well, sir. I have considered our mutual wrongs thoughtfully, and truly hold no hard feelings for mistakes we both made out of cold fear, and not letting in the warmth of love and understanding._

"Me and Elsa are heading back to do some wedding planning things. Okay, Kristly? You and Olaf be sure to bring our new friend Eliana back to the Castle later so we can get her all settled in to her room! She looks like she's going to be a big help in kicking my last-minute wedding preparations in high gear! Speaking of which…" Anna trails off before leaning intimately close to her fiancé's adorably still reddening face to say: "Be sure to have Baby ready and rearing to go on our extended honeymoon. Just you and me under the stars in a few days time, my sweet baboo. Then we can get to know each other so much better…" Anna boldly nibbles on Kristoff's already beet red ear with a little provocative blow into it before she sprints off with Elsa in tow to prepare for the whirlwind wedding she at last felt ready to say '_Yes_!' to spending her forever with her chosen guy, Kristoff Bjorgman.

Shoveling a piece of scrumptious chocolate cake into her mouth before she exits the door, a full cheeked Anna blows her man a farewell kiss, waving to the two now contented snow people entranced in one another's sweeping waltz with a broom around the bakery floor.

"Anna! You must chew your food more! I cringe to see what your waistline will be in the morning, sister dear." Anna found herself only mildly humiliated in front of all the spectators, as she shrugs her shoulders with a genuine careless smile while Elsa chuckles.

In that single moment she both realizes how incongruous Anna was for the job of Queen and just how terribly she missed being around the energetic, lovable girl.

Elsa more elegantly glides from the bakery, giving little pleasant waves to the townspeople who were so pleased to see the elder Queen in her home setting again that they start to cheer.

"Pish-posh! Kristoff would still marry me even if I had a waist like a walrus, or that great big rounded loaf over there! Let's hurry back to the Castle so I can show you Mama's wedding dress Gerda and Johanne have been helping refit to my tummy's healthier size! Mama was sure a petite little thing when she married Papa!" Anna pivots from defending her eating habits to talking about the former Queen of Arendelle in recent memory.

"We know how they first met when Papa was fourteen and Mama twelve years old, but I've been wondering how they, you know, got together again when they were older, haven't you? And how did Mama become a Princess of Norberg?" Anna's lively conversation suddenly turns a little more somber as she and Elsa walk hand-in-hand down the square towards that bronze statue depicting their parents's pivotal first meeting.

"I don't have to wonder anymore, Anna. So many of Mama and Papa's most important memories were dotted along the Ahtohallan River of memories. Suffice it say, theirs was an amazing romance of destiny, start finish. A fairytale of generosity and sacrifice being rewarded by the Lord's gift of true love. Even Aunt Arianna's encounter with Mama in the orphanage on a hiking outing with Aunt Willow was Providential." Elsa elucidates to Anna's query of their mother's good fortune in being discovered in a church charity orphanage near the Swedish border. That meeting with the older Princess of Drottningholm whose precocious younger sister Wilhelmina needed a companion more her age was just one of many scenes in Iduna's life story that her daughter could attribute to God's guiding Hand.

The subsequent encounter with Crown Prince Agnarr in a chance meeting at Corona for King Friedrich's wedding to Princess Arianna, was anything but left up to chance.

"I saw through those memory visions how Mama and Papa loved us so perfectly, so wonderfully, they always only meant to do what was best for us." Elsa whispers, understanding that greatest mystery of all a little better through her parents' example in the recollections she could now in her new capacity as the 'Snow Queen', view of those near and dear to her heart as she and Anna pause at the bronze statues of their embracing young parents erected in the center of the town square.

Reminded of her dual responsibilities both here in the south and in the northernmost section of her country, Elsa ice materializes her magical snowglobe. She glimpses into the Northuldra land of the Enchanted Forest that she must keep watch over as the Fifth Element of harmony.

"I wish they were here right now to share in my big moment with my big guy, Elsa. I know it was tough at times growing up all hermit-y in the castle like that – especially for you. But I'm kinda glad now I had so much time to spend with Mama and Papa, knowing they were always there for us because we were so inseparable a family who loved one another even in the hard days. We were so close." Tears fill Anna's emotive eyes as she and Elsa stand before the frozen in time statues and embrace tightly in a like fashion to their departed parents.

"Yes, their supportive presence was the one constant I could cling to amidst my storm. Sometimes I lie there in my lonely bed and close my eyes, dreaming that they're still alive. It felt so real, they felt so close, so alive, until I wake up." Elsa murmurs, on the verge of heartfelt tears of her own she never thought she'd shed into her sister's sweet-smelling ginger hair.

"Yeah, me too." Anna responds with a quiet sniffle, hugging Elsa all the tighter to know she missed Mama and Papa just as much.

But, like Papa instructed his girls when they were just little_: 'Remember: You must always protect each other.'_ That meant in Anna's loving eyes, that she and Elsa could not spend their lives _apart_.

These special sisters were meant to be each other's best friend, inseparable partner, and confidante for a lifetime and more, _together_.

Just like they were going to be close again now.

Nothing would stop Anna's happiness now that Elsa was back home in Arendelle with the people who loved her most, where she was most needed to help her darling little sister cerebrate her happy joining with her young man.

Planning and encouraging, laughing through the emotion-filled maelstrom a stressed Anna had been facing alone.

But both anxious young ladies could let go of their unspoken pressures since they were together now, to lean on, supporting each other like sisters were designed to.

The young Arendelle royal sisters were back where they were meant to be, side-by-side again as best friends, enjoying this cherished time of awakening new chapters in their lives as one heart.

And no matter what exciting adventures lie in the road up ahead, at least Anna had Elsa and Elsa had Anna, together an invincible pair that could face this bright world of new dreams.

An exciting world of this wondrous fairytale which, when all was said and done, was the inseparable sisters' favorite place to be, for now and always.

"Having the chance to sift through the River of Memories, I saw how much Papa and Mama loved us, Anna. So I'm sure their spirits are still with us now. I feel so much closer to them both, more now than ever, my eyes open to finally understand who they really were and how much they loved us and this country God gave them – and now you and I - to be faithful caretakers of. And most of all, they loved each other with a caring, unselfish love that nothing could ever take away. Just think that it all began with one incredible selfless act of kindness, linking our peoples with a bond that blossomed into an unsurpassable love." Elsa explains as the two girls stroll along the quiet dinnertime streets of Arendelle center.

"If only Mama was here, I could ask her so many questions about how to be a good wife and what it takes to grow into a love like she had with Papa all those years." Anna opens up to her sister of her secret anxieties as they walk hand in hand towards their castle home.

"Just like the kind of love that you and Kristoff share, Anna. I can tell when I look into his eyes and see only you there, reflecting back." Elsa warmly brushes a stray strand of Anna's cookie dough and flour sticky hair with a little wet ice cleaning between her magical fingertips as she loosens the tight bun, rebraiding it into the two loose tails which she knew grateful Anna so preferred.

"Because when it all comes down to it, as the Gospel writer wrote: 'And these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is Love…Love endures all things, for Love never ends'." Elsa had become so much wiser for her journey into Ahtohallan as she whispers to her beloved little sister the hope inspiring verse, enveloping Anna in the cooling breeze on this hot and humid mid-Summer night.

"You sound like Mama, Elsa. Makes me feel she and Papa are still close by." Smiling at the Biblical truths that warmed her heart, Anna winds her warm palm around Elsa's chilled one and pulls her close alongside as they walk home together.

Summer apple blossoms flow on the wind past them to circle around the bronze statues of the two breathtaking young figures who would once upon a time be Arendelle's King and his Queen.

"Yes, Anna, we'll all be together for your wedding. I can feel them, can't you?" Channeling those elemental spirits she had befriended for a second with a soft balmy breeze, Elsa comforts her sister with the assured belief that their parents would approve of the happy day.

Anna nods, holding back tears, glad beyond expression that Elsa was here with her again. Anna was certain of her love and Kristoff's and that their wedding would be a happy day.

Because it was one now where Elsa would be attending, at peace with herself and the gifts inside her to stand before all of Arendelle proudly by Anna's side, as her sister always hoped and prayed she would find the courage to, together.

After all, the wondrous place called 'Together' was always and forever to be Anna and Elsa's favorite place to be. Elsa understood this truth now more than ever.

And she vowed to never let Anna down again, as she grasps even tighter her sister's hand.

Elsa knew, deep inside, that she was truly home.

Both pretty faces upturn to God's miracle that was the Midnight Sun hovering over their magical Home of the great frozen North where their remarkable family's life began with an incredible act of Love which never will end.

_'Bless this happiness we found! Bless this good and solid ground of our home! Our home…'_

* * *

And their story continues on in the "Frozen Again Saga", starting with Book 1 - "Frozen Again: 'Faith, Hope and Love'"; then Book 2 '- "Frozen Again:'But the Greatest of These is Love'"; next Book 3 - "Frozen Again:'Love Endures All Things'"and finally into Book 4 -"Frozen Again: 'Love Never Ends'".

We invite you to please follow and read along on this long and winding, music-filled, magical path of true love, adventure and forgiveness' holy Redemption, inspired by the Biblical passages, starring our beloved Arendelle sisters Anna and Elsa and all the amazing "Frozen" cast. Plus, Cousin Rapunzel and her husband Flynn-er Eugene from "Tangled", will be visiting the great white north for a certain wedding and will be prominently featured in the next part's drama, and that gorgeous couple, set 7 years after the Tangled: TV series, will have a major part to play in getting the first thrilling tale going...

Thanks for reading and joining the romance, drama, mystery and fun as every Disney fairytale with two beautiful princess queens, deserves at least two happy endings... :)

* * *

_Yksinäisyyden Linnoitus – _Fortress of Solitude in Finnish

_Ahtohallan Joen -_ Ice frost River in Finnish

_jään pakkasta luola -_ icy frozen caverns in Finnish

* * *

Merry Christmas Eve, Frozen Again friends! I hope you felt the love and joy and peace on earth togetherness for our heroines as you read this third and final part of our prequel set in between the 'Frozen 2' movie and the start of my 'Frozen Again Saga'.

This incomparable sister act is back together where they belong, understanding their sisterly bond and love for their lost parents is integrally part of who they are now.

So the next story begins with Anna's grand wedding (at last!) to longsuffering 'righteous romancer', handsome mountainman/ Ice Harvester/ boyfriend of the century, Mr. Kristoff Bjorgman!

Please come along as Elsa & Anna, Kristoff, Sven, Olaf & now new snowgirl Eliana along with many familiar Disney faces move towards new romance and new adventures together in 'Frozen Again: Faith, Hope and Love'.

It's just the beginning of a long tale full of sweet sisterly devotion, old acquaintance's redemption and the discovery of an incredible love borne of God's forgiveness that surpasses all fear & past wrongs.

If you haven't already—and even if you have, maybe it's time for a reread ;P For me, too, as author about to tackle some tweaked adjustments planned to keep the story both true to canon and true to the heart of our beloved characters in the New Year – Please take a look at our continuing Trilogy 3 book series, 1) "Frozen Again: Faith, Hope and Love" 2) "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love" & 3) "Frozen Again: Love Never Ends" after you've now seen this "Frozen Again Prequel: And Now These Three Remain".

In the meantime…

We wish you a Merry Christmas, dear Frozen friends! And thanks again for the gift of your friendship and your keen interest in reading my Frozen Again Saga, as we start this New Year – an exciting New Decade of Frozen happy endings promised - Together!

メリークリスマス! God jul! Frohe Weihnachten! Joyeux Noël! Feliz Navidad! Maligayang Pasko! Buon Natale! Geseënde Kersfees! Καλά Χριστούγεννα! C Рождеством! Suksanwankhritmat! Selamat Natal! Gleðileg jól! Selamat Hari Krismas! Shèng dàn kuài lè! Veselé Vánoce! Glædelig jul! Chúc Mừng Giáng Sinh! Wesołych Świąt Bożego Narodzenia! krismas key subhakamanaen!

Merry Christmas to all my Fanfiction friends around the world!

God bless us all, everyone!

Joy to the world as the greatest gift of all, 'a Savior, Christ the Lord, is born this day for all nations to rejoice.' He shall be called 'Emmanuel' – God is with us.

Love and Nativity joy to you all on this blessed Christmas Eve,

Your Frozen friend, HarukaKou

p.s. Did you enjoy Mattias and Halima's part as much as I did? They make a handsome, sweet couple and I can't wait to involve their characters into the rest of my Frozen Again saga! Please watch for the General of Arendelle and his faithful sweetheart to make some vital character appearances in the trilogy, along with a few other tweaks along the way into this exciting New Decade Year 2020! :) Writing and reading 'Frozen Again' with you is my favorite place to be, dear friends! Thanks for coming along for the sleighride!

Olaf and Eliana love reviews!

Merry Christmas, everyone!


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